Kevin Harrington // marketing // blog

Volvo, at the recommendation of their agency Mindshare, have started a campaign to annoy potential customers right across Europe. Well done.

I say this based on my experience. The essence of the campaign is a Quick Response (QR) mechanism. This uses a 2D barcode on print advertising.

The Swedish car maker’s Ice White campaign has been built around the theme “open up and come alive”, and uses the print ads to provide readers with instant access to additional web content on their mobile. >>> more

My experience of Volvo QR: text the number on the page, download a reader, do it again as it didn’t run, do it yet again as it didn’t run, then get told my phone ( a 12 month old BlackBerry…hardly a Nokia 3310!) was not compatible.

So I have no idea what I would have been told if Volvo had been using technology that was accessible from my phone. Perhaps when they do an agency review I may find out.

Google Phone

I’m rather excited by the pending arrival of the Google Phone, G1. But it will be a quandary for me.

Out of principal I would not buy an iPhone as I find their distribution approach offensive. I don’t want to move to O2 and I don’t want a new phone number. These are both things that were demanded at the UK launch of the iPhone.

This resulted in me finally abandoning Sony handsets (having worked for them in the 80s and 90s there was a bit of a loyalty) to get the functionality I wanted. I migrated to Blackberry Pearl 8100.

But the Google Phone is looking very exciting. That said, there are mixed views about the launch. Do I depart from Blackberry in favour of Google?