Imagine yourself eating a delicious slice of your favorite pizza. Since you are a massive fan of ketchup you reach out for the Heinz bottle. You top your pizza with it and keep on enjoying every bite of it. In the mean time you spot a QR code in the back of the bottle. Out of curiosity you take your smart phone, scan the code and see what happens. And then a sudden surprise. You forget to eat and leave your mouth open. Half-chewed food is starting to fall out of your mouth. “WTF?” is your reaction. Instead of a Heinz promotion, you get pornography.
It happened in Germany (oh you naughty Germany, you) to a guy named Daniel K. He scanned the QR code on his ketchup bottle and it redirected him to FunDorado.de. This domain name was owned by Heinz in between 2012 and 2014 when they ran a contest, where you got a chance to design your own label. The ownership has expired and apparently they had plenty of leftover bottles that they filled with fresh ketchup and keep on selling them. In the mean time, FunDorado, a Germany based porn site, registered the domain name and redirected it to their main page, FunDorado.com. Somehow Heinz forgot about it, or didn’t even check who’s the new owner of the domain and accidentally started promoting porn on their bottles.
I am wondering what was kids’ reactions when they scanned this QR code, because even if the bottle’s a leftover, many households are still having them, said Daniel on Facebook.
Thanks to Facebook and Daniel being brave enough to share this blunder, he got rewarded – 2 times. First: Heinz offered Daniel K. to create his own label and a free bottle of ketchup with his design on. Second: FunDorado saw Daniel’s post and jumped in conversation, offering him a full one year subscription to the page, free of charge. Now that’s what we call a proper win-win situation.
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