Sherwin-Williams Markets With QR Codes in Brazil
The Brazilian
consumer market
has yet to catch
on with quick
response codes, but
it’s getting there.
by Charles W. Thurston
Latin America Correspondent
thurstoncw@rodpub.com
Marketing gurus at Sherwin-Williams have adopted the quick response bar code matrix as a tool to distinguish
their premium paint lines in Brazil, and to attract
technology-savy—and salary-comfortable—
consumers to the brand. Sherwin-Williams is
using the code on their Premium Metalatex, Su-pera and Clima & Tempo lines, embedding it on
paint cans, brochures and banners.
“Our pursuit of satisfying and exceeding the
needs of our clients is the peak of our endeavors.
We always focus our efforts in the research and
development of innovative products; that is our
brand,” David Ivy Jr., the director of marketing
for Sherwin-Williams in Brazil told the local
press at the time of the recent campaign launch.
Quick response codes are not yet well known
in the Brazilian consumer market, so the Sherwin-Williams launch may be perceived as an
edgy trend. Sao Paulo publisher Editoras rolled
out an interactive quick response advertising
campaign that linked to Twitter several years
ago and subsequently published a book from
the responses. Similarly, female British beach
volleyball stars have more recently flashed Rio
de Janiero audiences with quick response codes
on their bikini bottoms carrying an ad for a
home-country company.
Quick response codes were initially developed by Toyota manufacturing unit Denso-Wave in 1994 to help speed parts along. They
initially consisted of zig-zag oriented black and
white blocks of ink some 1.25 inches square,
and holding roughly eight kilobytes of information; many variations now exist in terms of
color use and pattern density.
The open-standard two-dimensional codes
typically carry information on an Internet Uniform Resource Locators, or URLs, which
could point to a video on YouTube. Consumers gain access by photographing the code
with mobile phones equipped with scanning
software, including that developed by Google.
The technology has had broad usage in information distribution in the United States and
Europe, apart from Japan, but has been slow
to catch on elsewhere. Now Microsoft, Spy-derLynk and other code inventors have competing two-dimensional formats in use.
Facebook is said to be experimenting with
quick response codes for the purpose of embedding advertising on their pages.
Sherwin-Williams might use the codes to
track inquiries by geography, by product line, or
by color, among a myriad of uses, all of which
can be tracked by computer and mined for consumer data. Consumers potentially could receive
a customized code on a specific can for reordering the same product, including the contact information for the individual and store where the
custom color was mixed.
Apart from the Sherwin-Williams lines sporting the quick response codes, other S-W lines in
Brazil are Novacor, Kem Tone, Aquacryl, Col-orgin, Sumaré and Euronavy. Near its headquarters in Sao Paulo, S-W manufacturers its
architectural lines at Taboão da Serra. Industrial
and aerosol lines are manufactured at Sumare,
in Sao Paulo state, while automotive lines are
produced at Sao Bernardo do Campo, also in
Sao Paulo state, which is the center of the auto
manufacturing industry in the country. CW
