"Shop & Pay": A first attempt at QR codes & Daily Deals

iMob, the adverising arm of SMRT created a partnership with Paypal and Nokia to launch Shop & Pay, a Deals campaign comprising of billboards featuring QR codes in high traffic areas of subway.  The billboard had several product deals and prominent QR codes along with basic instructions.  The campaign lasted for a couple of months, and based on my daily observations (in my home MRT station) only a mediocre success.  


I think the challenge was in the name “Shop and Pay” which sounds pretty generic.  iMob has since changed the program to “Scan and Pay”, which makes more sense.  The other issue with the campaign was that the billboard did did little to explain what a QR code was and where to find a scanner.  In a new campaign with EpiLife in Somerset station, they’ve included instructions for iOS, BB and Android, a major upgrade. 


The QR code URL takes the user directly to the Paypal buy page for the product.  Of course the Paypal branding helps with legitimizing but there is no intermediate landing page experience which is a distraction since this is the flow that daily deal users come to expect.  Of the passers by that I observed, no one stood around long enough to complete the purchase on the spot (because of the time it takes to enter in credit card or paypal info) which is a key challenge to a "prepayment" experience.....hence the need call for NFC...perhaps!

So a good first attempt with immediate refinements to the program!