Australian product coupon catalog Letterbox Deals ran a campaign to build awareness of its brand with Sydney households by giving away Dell notebook computers. 

Consumers had the option to enter a competition via a Web site or a QR code printed within the catalog. Of the 1.3 million Sydney households that received the Letterbox Deals catalog, 25 percent submitted their entry through the QR code.

?The strategy of the campaign was to determine consumer behavior when confronted with new mobile technology and the effectiveness of a QR code as a call to action,? said Nick Gonios, commercial director of Inscribe, Sydney.

Letterbox Deals is a coupon catalogue and Web site that helps consumers find coupons and deals on product and services near them.

Insqribe is a real-time proximity mobile marketing platform using augmented reality and QR codes.

Insqribe claims that 60 percent of consumers who entered the competition downloaded a QR reader and were therefore new to using QR codes. This means that not having a reader pre-installed on a device is not such a big barrier. 

The fact that 25 percent of competition entries were from scanning QR codes means that the QR code as a call to action option, together with the impulse and convenience of using a mobile device, was compelling enough to stop consumers from going to their PC.

The campaign targeted brands, retailers and publishers.

The most outstanding result of this effort was the high number of entrants via QR code, and the number of people who actually downloaded a reader to their phone in order to use the service, when they could have entered the competition from a Web site, Mr. Gonios said.

?Consumers embrace new mobile technology very quickly and QR codes are a great call to action for impulse driven marketing campaigns,? Mr. Gonios said. "QR codes definitely work just look at the numbers we achieved.

?All it needs is a little thought into the campaign, instead of just putting a QR code on an ad and expecting people to know what it is,? he said.