A few days ago, I posted an interesting digital marketing campaign from Tesco Homeplus, the “Virtual Subway Store“. The campaign leaded to drastic increase in online sales as well as number of registered members. Although it was successful in temporally increasing awareness and getting attention, it wasn’t enough to change the market trend or boost long term growth.

Because the campaign was so interesting, I decided to surf on the web for another creative marketing campaign in Korea. Surprisingly, I found articles about a marketing campaign that was ran by Korea’s number 1 discount retail store E-mart. Click on this link to view the full version video: Emart Sunny Sale Campaign.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvIJfUySmY0

From research they found out that their sales severely decrease during the lunch time. Despite the fact that E-mart is Korea’s largest discount chain store, they needed to solve their weakness. They came up with a brilliant idea of installing a QR code that can only be activated from 12pm to 1pm by using the sunlight and shadow. Forecasting weather and placing the 3-dimensional QR codes may have been challenging but it was successful; over 12,000 coupons were issued, 58% increase in membership, and 25% increase in sales during lunch time.

Source: http://biz.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2012/04/08/2012040801667.html

Similar to Homeplus’ virtual store campaign, this one also had temporal impact to customers. However, what I found this one better is that it actually makes people to try using the QR code.  It turns people’s curiosity into potential purchase of products and increased sale.

Logo of Cheil Marketing Agency

What really interested me more was the fact that both the Virtual Subway Store campaign from Homeplus and the Shadow QR Code campaign from E-mart was designed by the same agency. Some experts criticize both campaigns as focusing more on getting awards from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. I still think it takes outstanding effort  and creativity to come up with these brilliant ideas and I appreciate their trial of new trend in marketing. At the end of the day, both campaigns achieved to engage people and provide them new experience.