FBlog

As London moves ever closer to next year’s Olympic games, its organisers are getting ready with the ‘London Prepares Series’ (http://www.londonpreparesseries.com/). This programme of events, consisting of BMX, Mountain Biking, Basketball and Beach Volleyball, act as a buffer of trial and error for the games’ organisers and gives them a chance to iron out the kinks ahead of next years fiercely-planned games.

The London prepares series not only gives the events’ organisers a chance to ‘get ready’, but allows brands to try any new ideas or initiatives they have for promoting brand awareness, raising advocacy or driving sales and site traffic. It provides a rare opportunity in which brands can ‘lab test’ their ideas and innovations in relatively confined-yet realistic settings. This means that if there is someone in an agency somewhere, who has always dreamed of creating ‘the next big thing’ but comes up with an idea that is more dragons-den-dud, than Dyson, they wont be left too red faced.

No brand has taken more advantage of this opportunity than the betting website ‘Betfair’. They have partnered with two GB Beach Volleyball athletes in an attempt to promote their brand in a very original way.

For years, brands have been using attractive men and women to advertise their products and services, but perhaps never in such a technical and shrewd manner. Betfair have taken the increasingly popular and very simple QR (quick response) barcode technology and literally ‘branded’ the two GB athletes by sticking the codes on their bums.

This allows the spectators (who are of course made up of 50% men and 50% women…) to use the cameras on their phones to take a picture of ‘the barcode’.

This is potentially ingenious, because it a) takes advantage of spectators’ desire to capture the…talent, b) removes a level of awkwardness from taking photos of the event, and c) most importantly; scanning the code using your smartphone takes consumers to the brand! It transports them to the Betfair website where they can bet in-play, on the game they are watching – genius!

If it works, this could put Betfair at the forefront of sports betting for the largest sporting event in the world – next year’s Olympic and Paralympic games! And just think, the possibilities for the brand to extend this initiative are potentially endless… obviously QR barcodes have been around for a while, providing yet another channel for brands to connect with consumers, but up until now these have all been on static things. Brands have not put these codes on people, in this way. Gambling brands could do the same in boxing, basketball, archery, tennis and so on. In utilising sport like this, Betfair are engaging with a medium that evokes so much passion amongst its viewers, that with the increased desire for and use of in-play betting, they are not only providing a new way for existing customers to interact with the brand (and spend money), but are making it easy and enjoyable for new customers to start doing so.

This could be a real winner for Betfair and they have certainly thrown a curve ball in the war for traffic and spend that is online gambling.

If they get ahead of the game on this, they could really leave their competitors behind.

To me, it’s a great idea, even if it is a bit cheeky!