Here’s a release from one of the most amazingly specific mobile advertising companies I have ever encountered. Qr4Wine is part of the Sevencamp advertising company, and it’s name tells you exactly what it does – it sells QR Codes to Wineries as a form of advertising. As it announces a new deal with Justin Vineyards & Winery today, we take a look at what’s on offer.

What’s a QR Code?

QR Codes are 2d barcodes – grids of black and white squares that your phone can scan:

The code contains information that your phone can make use of once it has scanned it. Quite often, the information is a mobile webpage that your phone will open – but it can also be a piece of content to be downloaded, or the option to send an automatic SMS. In a recent example from Mobio, the code caused your phone to access a menu of food and drinks items that you could then order and pay for from your mobile.

For the most part, you need a scanning application to use a QR Code – so in general only smartphone owners will be able to make use of this technology.

What are Qr4Wine and Justin Vineyards doing together?

Justin is going to be placing QR Codes on its promotional materials, website and even on the labels for bottles of wine themselves. When a consumer scans the code, they will get access to a variety of tasting notes for the bottle of wine, as well a video of proprietor Justin Baldwin describing the particular bottle of wine.

Jason Shorrock is the Vice President Director of Sales and Marketing for Justin Vineyards & Winery, and been mostly responsible for putting the Qr4Wine system into use. He said “wineries are historically known for a fairly low-tech approach when compared to other industries… Justin 2D codes offer us a 100 percent winery-controlled, totally dynamic, mobile marketing platform. We can provide in-depth information from the physical space of less than 1-inch square, including detailed HD video.”

What we think?

Usually I’m pretty down on mobile barcodes that do nothing but offer additional information on the product you’re already looking at. But in the case of bottles of wine, that’s actually pretty useful. It’s nice to be able to access tasting notes for the wine, no matter you’re buying it from. Although I would caution Jason Shorrock to avoid linking QR Codes to HD VIDEO – people get angry when you send their mobile bills through the roof.

And I cannot urge you to go and watch the Qr4Wine demo video strongly enough. It’s an AMAZING combination of cheap graphics and INCREDIBLY intense music: http://play.goldmail.com/eaaslvqbng31