When you run a campaign in a business, you expect the customer to get all the information and feedback from your website. However, in the case of a ketchup customer, the scene was completely different. When he scanned the QR code to get additional information about the running campaign from the ketchup manufacturer, he was sent to a ‘spicier’ website rather than the original one.
The incident took place in Germany, when a customer named Daniel Korell scanned a campaign QR code on a bottle of Heinz tomato ketchup. To his surprise, the QR code when scanned, took him straight to a porn website. The customer posted the results on the company’s Facebook account, saying the Heinz Hot Ketchup "is probably not for minors", to which Heinz has apologized with an explanation. (click here)
The Heinz bottle was an older batch of 2014, which had a promotional campaign printed on the rear. The bottle also had a QR code for the website, which the customer can scan using his mobile phone or tablet and get additional information about the campaign. Unfortunately, the campaign which ran from 2012-2014 had ended a while ago and the promotional campaign website was abandoned, which was later shut and bought over by a pornographic website.
UPI reported the incident and stated that a Heinz representative had apologized for the huge goof up. Heinz was using the domain name “sagsmithheinz.de” for the campaign, which later lapsed after the campaign closed in 2014. A pornographic later website took over the website.
"Even if the bottle was a leftover, it's still in lots of households," Korell said in a comment. "It's incomprehensible that you didn't reserve the domain for one or two years. A .de domain name really doesn't cost the Earth."
Heinz Korell a custom-designed ketchup bottle, free of cost, as compensation and said that it would accept all suggestions for future campaigns. But the deal did not end here—Korell was also given a free membership from the porn website which tool over the Heinz’s abandoned website. Lucky him!
