Where to Smoke? Ask a QR Code!

Cigarette manufacturers are often targeted for coming out with products that may be harmful to human health.  Indeed in a lot of cities and in different countries, the places where cigarettes may be smoked are getting fewer and fewer.

Ronhill Unlimited is a Croatian cigarette brand that had to contend with new anti-smoking laws that prohibited smoking in public places.

So what is a cigarette brand to do?  Rely on QR codes, what else?

Working with Bruketa Zinic and Brlog, Ronhill placed QR codes on its packaging.  When scanned, the QR codes take the users to a mobile Web site that features interactive reviews of all the events in the immediate area and, more importantly, lists all the cafes, stores and public places where smoking is allowed.

What’s more the Ronhill QR code campaign takes advantage of GPS technology that allows the user to access a regional map with his or her current location automatically once he or she gets into the mobile site.

The mobile site also allows people to add locations that they discover to help out fellow smokers.

QR Codes and Its Unique Solutions

QR codes are very flexible that you could use it to solve just about any problem that your small business face.  In this case, QR codes provided customers with a convenient way to learn about the places where they could smoke and avoid breaking the law or offending non-smokers.

True, it would be easy to just include a paper list of areas where smoking is allowed, but that would mean that the user would have to sort through lots and lots of useless information when all he or she needed is the name of the nearest place.  Plus, such a list would not be dynamic.  New additions would be difficult to incorporate.

Instead, QR codes and the mobile Internet provides an easy way to solve this problem.  What’s more, it just made finding a place to smoke fun.