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Royal Oak Apartments Deliver For Residents With QR Code

ROYAL OAK -- New residents of Urbane Apartments are getting a treat when they move in: free pizza.

While things such as complementary pizza and other freebies aren't entirely new concepts, Urbane Apartments is taking the concept a few steps ahead.

"We have created a QR code that is inside of a pizza box that we place in the apartment unit on top of the stove," says Eric Brown, president of Urbane Apartments. "Inside the pizza box are paper plates and napkins along with a QR code shaped like a pizza that takes the user to a short animated video (http://vimeo.com/36366061) that's a spoof on the hassles of moving, tells the resident that dinner is on us, and here is how to get your free pizza delivered."

Urbane Apartments teamed up with a Jet's Pizza franchise that serves and delivers most of Urbane Apartments' communities. It provides the promotional pizza boxes and pizzas in exchange for marketing in the company's online magazine, The Urbane Life. The move-in dinner package also includes a sampling of Vitamin Water with which Urbane Apartments has had a longstanding partnership marketing relationship.

"The cost to the company is nil as we created the QR code and video in-house and have most everything else cross-marketed," Brown says. "It's a true win-win."

With the advent of smart phones, QR (Quick Response) codes have become an increasingly integral part of digital marketing campaigns, especially with Urbane Apartments' target market of 25-35-year-old young professionals who are early technology adopters and heavy users of smart phones.

"Anytime you use a QR code, there has to be a surprise at the end," Brown says. "You're asking someone to take 30 or 40 seconds out of their life to look at something. It's a great, cheap way for a business to do something really innovative. This is leading-edge marketing at its core."

Urbane Media is a Royal Oak-based social media marketing and public relations laboratory that tests leading-edge communication vehicles before unleashing its knowledge and wisdom on multi-family housing clients and other small businesses.

More at http://urbanemedia.co/.

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