Companies no longer define success as the point at which a consumer buys their product. For some companies, it’s more about what the product tells the consumers after they’ve picked it up.
Sure, it sounds strange, but companies such as Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kraft, and Campbell Soup have invested and continue to invest in technologies that give them this information while giving some information back to consumers. And it all starts with a simple UPC.
Mobile technology providers have found a way to turn the barcode on package goods into a stream of consumer communication. Pilot programs focused on discovering customer interest are already in play, such as Coca-Cola’s program with Stickybits, a provider of a free mobile app that uses bar-scanning technology to attach digital content to physical objects.
A consumer using a Stickybits-enabled phone can scan a Coke can and see a “Coke Mythology” video, which promotes a summer campaign focused on the soda’s “secret formula,” as well as other comments and content from the company and its products’ users.
PepsiCo is using Stickybits for its Pepsi and Frito-Lay products. Consumers that scan the barcodes on those products will learn about the company’s community funding efforts and partnerships with local farmers. “There is something so potent here, such a huge opportunity in using universal codes that are already out there. Everything we interact with in the physical world can now be part of conversational media,” said Bonin Bough, director of social media at PepsiCo.
Bough is assembling a council to strategize on ways the technology could also provide broader marketing and promotional benefits for the companies that use it. “Someone can scan in the US and someone can scan in Asia and be part of the same conversation,” Bough said.
A number of proponents say the technology, as part of the commerce infrastructure, can only be successful, such as Stickybits’ Chairman and Co-founder Seth Goldstein, who believes the technology operates more as a conversational channel. “People will realize the products around them have stories and will interact with them. At a certain point they won’t even need a code. The phone will recognize the object based on image recognition,” said Goldstein.
But not everyone is buying into the UPC uproar. Users on iTunes’ App Store have already commented about the application’s privacy issues, particularly when it comes to geographically pinpointing where the user scanned the product. Richard Laermer, a social media guru and CEO of RLM PR, says he just doesn’t see the point. “The one reason it’s not a trend is it has no wide-ranging implications,” he said. “I mean, you do it and then what?”
But perhaps there doesn’t have to be a point. Kraft and Proctor & Gamble worked with a company called CauseWorld earlier this year, which offered consumers extra “Karma Points” for scanning products to earn charitable contributions to the users’ favorite causes.
“If you’re a P&G or Kraft, you have more than 50 different products in a store, and it becomes like a scavenger hunt for users who probably don’t associate the brands with those companies,” said Cyriac Roeding, CauseWorld’s co-founder, CEO, who said the app has been downloaded 550,000 times.
Companies Scan and Deliver
