Coupons are great at saving you money. But for the most part, there’s nothing particularly interesting or creative about them. Unless a coupon has an unusually high value, or is for a product that rarely offers them, a basic bar code printed on a piece of paper or displayed on a mobile phone screen won’t have too many people buzzing about it.
Unless the product itself is the bar code.
Doughnut maker Krispy Kreme is building buzz around its annual “Day of the Dozens” promotion, in which it offers a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for a dozen of its signature Original Glazed each December 12th (that’s 12/12, “Day of the Dozens” – get it?) This year, it’s gone above and beyond, by producing a video of the doughnut-making process that doubles as the coupon itself.
Look closely at the video above (click to play), to see what Krispy Kreme is calling “The World’s Tastiest Coupon”. The freshly-made doughnuts ride on a conveyor belt through a gooey “glaze waterfall” that coats them with the white stuff. But this waterfall is different from the typical ones that pour a solid sheet of glaze onto the doughnuts. It’s been modified with pieces of metal welded to the machine, creating a carefully calibrated waterfall that functions as a readable bar code.
“Real doughnut glaze, making a real barcode, that really scans,” the company says. On Saturday, 12/12, just play the above video on your mobile device at participating Krispy Kreme locations, let the cashier scan it, and you’ll get a free dozen glazed doughnuts when you purchase a dozen.
Krispy Kreme, and its ad agency Baldwin&, are billing it as the world’s first scannable video. And it’s certainly clever, though it’s not the first gimmicky coupon offer, in which the medium of the coupon itself overshadows the actual deal that the coupon offers. Earlier this year, the fast food chain Jack in the Box offered the Guinness-certified “world’s largest coupon,” which it hung from the side of a building (customers could snap a photo and redeem that, in lieu of the actual coupon). Back in October, airline JetBlue put up poster-sized coupons all over New York City, inviting passersby to “steal” them and redeem them for prizes. And Baldwin& itself created a campaign for Burt’s Bees a few years ago, in which it set up an eye-level billboard made up entirely of coupons, that pedestrians could pull off as they walked by.
Whatever it takes to stand out from the pack, and make coupons seem special again.
“Our focus has been to try to wean away, and trim back, some of that everyday discounting or couponing, and that still largely is our strategy,” Krispy Kreme CEO Tony Thompson told investors yesterday. Instead of constant coupon offers, “we continue to leverage more special occasion days,” Thompson said, such as offering free doughnuts on “Talk Like a Pirate Day” or “National Coffee Day”.
And now, the Day of the Dozens, with its clever coupon offer.
If you’re not into playing videos on your phone, you can print out the much-less-exciting paper version of the BOGO coupon from Krispy Kreme’s website.
But, compared to becoming a part of mobile coupon history – what fun would that be?
