In Bev utilises mobile technology again – this time with NFC

Rating: High tech poster for Beck Vier beer found in Boys Room

Re-enforcing our assertion that in the UK the drinks industry is leading the way when it comes to utilising mobile technology for product marketing and promotions, GoMobile News came across another mobile friendly poster. We alluded to this in a previous story here we spotted this particular promotional poster for Beck Vier lager in the Boys room at the Slug & Lettuce pub at Clapham Junction [London]. We notice that. once again, it is In Bev, the brewer, behind the promotion as was the case with the Greene King/Stella promotion we mentioned here. This time the poster not only used a QR code but it also employed an NFC chip. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to get the NFC chip to work.
Initially we were quite impressed because the poster offered no fewer than three ways to respond to the promotion: – via QR code, via NFC chip and via the standard web.

We’ve outlined our woes with trying to get the NFC chip to interact correctly with our Motorola RAZR i here.

So instead we employed a standard mobile barcode reading app – the NeoReader from NeoMedia. That worked fine.

The link took us onto the special Becks View free music download web page. We filled in our details – including an email address.

Subsequently, we found that you can only download your free track via a PC which is annoying because it means you have to work out how to transfer the free MP3 track back to the phone.

What this poster illustrates, however, is something which we were discussing recently with Alan Gabbay from Udozi – the fact that as yet there is no universal symbol for NFC compatibility.

Nonetheless, we are prepared to give this promo eight out of ten for trying.

All we’ve got to do now is figure out why the NFC chip didn’t work. Was it the handset’s fault or the posters?