How a professional QR partner powered a drinks promotion in Tennessee and delivered consistent messaging in Paris

There are many ways that businesses can make use of QR codes, from simple web links to interactive online content, loyalty schemes and payments. Whatever you want to do, a professional QR code partner can help you achieve it, and ensure you’re getting the best from the technology.

Here are two ways that QR specialist Unitag.io has helped organisations achieve quite different goals, across different countries and industries.

Case study 1: Powering a promotion for a US drinks company

The Alma Mater Beverage Company is a drinks brand based in Nashville, Tennessee. To build business and loyalty, the company had the idea of creating a new beer themed on US college sports – and promising, with every purchase, to donate to the buyer’s favourite university sports team.

How would buyers choose which team they wanted to support? The company’s first idea was to offer a different can for each university, but that was a non-starter. “There are a lot of regulations with packaging alcoholic beverages in the US,” explains Alma Mater’s Nathan Cohen. “If you want to use different designs, you have to register each design with each individual state. It would have been a logistical nightmare.”

Instead the company decided to produce a standard design, incorporating a QR code that purchasers could scan to vote – and they turned to QR specialists Unitag to help them make the project a reality.

“From the outset, Unitag was very helpful in meeting us and helping us decide what would work,” Cohen recalls. “They guided us on, ‘this would be very easy to do, this wouldn’t be so easy.’”

Once the plan was agreed, Unitag took care of generating tens of thousands of unique QR codes for printing on the drink cans, to ensure that each can could be scanned only once. If purchasers wanted to vote again for their team, they’d have to buy another can.

At the same time, Unitag was also managing the technical side. “They designed not just the QR code, but the landing page,” says Cohen. “When you scan the code, you arrive at a page where you can cast your vote for your favourite university. Then you’ll see a top-ten list of the universities we’ve donated to, and you get to see where yours is ranked among rival schools.”

While the expert partner is running the servers, all the data still flows back to Alma Mater. “We get instant results from Unitag,” says Cohen. “They give us all of the information we need – geolocation, IP addresses, everything.”

“Unitag’s been great,” he concludes. “Working with them has been amazing. In terms of what worked – well, really, nothing didn’t work.”

Case study 2: Consistent messaging for Paris’ public transport network

The RATP group runs both the Paris Métro and the city’s extensive bus service – along with numerous other regional train, tram and shuttle services. Keeping passengers informed and engaged across such a broad, diverse network is a challenge, especially since operations are naturally split across many offices.

RATP embraced QR codes back in 2014 as a convenient way to provide links to live information at stations, bus stops and other locations – but at first there was a lack of centralised management. “QR codes would be created by different service providers, or in house using different tools,” recalls Nicolas Palhier, digital manager at RATP group.

The solution was to bring in an external specialist. Today, the QR codes used across all of RATP’s divisions are created and serviced by Unitag, allowing the whole transport network to benefit from what Palhier describes as “simplicity, responsiveness, consistency and analytical tracking.”

RATP has even expanded its use of QR codes: they’re now used for promotional material as well as information, and for purposes such as tracking lost property or reporting equipment breakdowns.

“Through centralising the creation of QR codes via Unitag, we have an overall company view of our QR code requirements, global and QR code-based analytical monitoring,” explains Palhier. “Overall, we’re gaining in efficiency and responsiveness.”

And that’s not the only benefit. Using a single QR solution allows RATP to create “standardised codes that reflect the RATP Group’s identity”, helping to reinforce the brand and engender trust among travellers.

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