Brief:

• Camden Town Brewery is giving away beer to mobile users who scan a QR code in a TV commercial with a smartphone camera. The craft-beer maker, which is owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev, is running what it calls "the world's first 'drinkable' TV ad" during U.K. broadcasts of the UEFA Champions League soccer tournament, the company said in a press release.
• The QR codes offer viewers a chance to win Camden Hells Lager for home delivery in packs of six, 12 and 24 beers. The brewer aims to give away 45,000 beers during the promotion, which which first aired on BT Sport on Aug. 18-19, and will run during the Champion League's final on Aug. 23. The commercial also will appear Aug. 21-23 and Aug. 28-30 on Channel 4 in the U.K.
• Ad agency Wieden+Kennedy created the QR-enabled ad, while Bountiful Cow is in charge of planning and media for the campaign. The ad shows an animated Camden Town Brewery and a mix of fictional characters created by animation studio Blink, per the announcement.

Insight:

Camden Town Brewery's QR-enabled commercial aims to drive a direct response from viewers who may be self-isolating at home instead of venturing out to bars, restaurants and pubs during the coronavirus pandemic. The campaign can help to simplify the process of responding to its call-to-action (CTA), letting mobile users scan a QR code instead of dialing a toll-free number or typing in a web address in a mobile browser. The direct-response mechanism can help Camden Town immediately see how its ads are performing based on the number of orders. Camden Town also can identify customers who are most likely to respond to future promotions that comply with the U.K.'s data-privacy law.

The campaign is another sign of how QR codes are becoming integrated with advertising channels like linear TV. In the U.S., the scannable markers had seen higher usage with the introduction of better smartphone camera technology, but that adoption declined among marketers because of some of the creative restrictions that come with the format and a lack of technical standards. However, a growing number of marketers in the past year have found ways to use the technology to either activate a mobile-based experience or to generate a response to an ad.

PepsiCo's Mtn Dew brand this month featured a QR code for mobile consumers to scan at checkout to participate in a sweepstakes. Burger King in April included a QR code in a TV commercial for its "QR Whopper" giveaway. Mobile users who scanned the floating code were pointed to a web page with coupons for a free burger ordered through its BK App. 

Previously, Chick-fil-A last year boosted downloads of its app by 14% after showing a QR code in its digital signage that pointed to an app store. Broadcaster NBCUniversal last year introduced shoppable TV commercials with scannable QR codes that pointed to e-commerce sites, while Pepsi embedded QR codes in its packaging for a digital scratch-off game.