We recently wrote about the Urban Games trend that is fast blurring the line between the virtual and the physical worlds we wander in. An Aussie company has recently discovered a way to transform online customers into real world visitors. Or in this case - drinkers.

BCode - have developed an online portal where consumers can buy drinks for their mates through the use of encoded text messages. There are obvious hurdles that applications like this will face when being pioneered in a completely new market, but the process does turn out to be quite simple, which we like.

You log onto bCCODE and select a participating bar, the drink of choice, enter the lucky recipient’s mobile phone number and pay for the drink online. A message (customised if you like) is sent to the recipient’s mobile. A quick scan under the scanning device at the nominated bar and the drink is ready for consumption. bCODE says “…For retailers, applications like bCODE-Drinks demonstrate how they can convert a web visitor into a store customer using the mobile phone. It’s like pay-per-click advertising, but it goes from online to offline into the physical world…”

It appears only Sydney bars are on the vendor lists so far for bCODE, which probably explains the prices but perhaps a brand looking for a different type of promotion might be able to get on board and make it more cost effective for the bars and the consumer to adapt this convergence of retailing and marketing.

Source and Image: Springwise