Adidas Offers Support For Japanese FIFA Team With QR Code

Adidas is no stranger to innovation in marketing, branding and promotion. When it comes to being the pioneer, Adidas and Nike goes neck to neck, often trying to out-cool each other for the same group of consumers.

With FIFA 2010 looming ahead, who can blame them to using QR Codes to promote their brand and generating support for the Japanese team? No one. This year, FIFA will be held in various South African soccer stadiums and despite the distance, Adidas Japan is hell bent on bringing as much support to their football team members as possible. Through their website, you get to download a QR Code. For those who understands and can read Japanese on the site, head on over to this Adidas Japan website. You will be shown a QR Code that you can scan or copy to your computer and then printed out but you will need to register for a free account by providing your email address.

The website encourages users and supporters of the Japanese team to write down positive messages to support their favorite players or the team in general. The comments will appear in the website. But that is not why we are intrigued with the QR Code marketing campaign.

The way they have decided to do this is a little unique because there is a combination of QR Code technology and Augmented Reality. For the augmented reality part of the promotion, you will need a working web-cam. Wave the QR Code in front of the web-cam and you will have the encouraging messages written for the players displayed on the screen right in front you. In fact, the said messages will also appear in some selected digital signage placed at Adidas stores in the city.

Yes, that is how big (and cool) this whole campaign is. But we shouldn’t be surprised with the distance that the Japanese are willing to go to support their countrymen. Japanese are very passionate and positive people. When it comes to technology like QR Code, nothing intimidates them, nothing can stop them and in fact, it is the opinion of some that the Japanese are in the lead as the world’s most technologically-advanced society because of their positive mindset.

Are you one of those who are absolutely QRazy about football (in our case, it’s actually soccer) as they are. Head over to FIFA’s official website for more information. http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/index.html