I’ve long been a fan of the Red Hot Chili Peppers - admiring their music, their eclectic personalities and their album (yes, album) artwork over the years. They (and their management) have also proven to be great at cultivating the band's image through the years. I guess it should have come as no surprise then to see that they’ve managed to take a creative and effective turn at mobile marketing in promoting their latest album I’m With You.
RHCP fans know that the ‘asterisk’ has long been associated with the band, appearing on many of their albums and a lot of their tour merchandise.
To promote I’m With You, they’ve created a QR (quick-response) code in the shape of an asterisk that has been appearing on various promotional materials.Scanning the code takes you to a mobile-friendly website (see below for a composite image from my iPhone) where you can buy the album, listen to tracks and watch music videos. You can also sign up for their email newsletter, access their latest tweets and share a link to the mobile site on Twitter and Facebook.
I’m not usually a fan of ‘custom’ QR codes as too often the ‘customization’ results in a code that doesn’t scan (check out this article by CNN for examples of “cool” QR codes – most of which unfortunately don’t scan or go to non-mobile friendly websites).
Here, rather than removing sections of the QR code and overlaying a logo as many brands do, they’ve largely extended the QR code outwards to form the Asterisk.
Kudos to RHCP for a great illustration of using Mobile Marketing to both reinforce a brand (band?) image and effectively engage their mobile audience. And probably sell a few albums.
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