Bolthouse Farms is utilizing Instagram for a pretty interesting campaign, encouraging users to snap pictures of its products, tag it with pre-determined hashtags, and get money-saving coupons to use toward the products.

Instagram recently launched its ad platform, but this is a pretty good example of how a brand can use Facebook’s visual network without paying for it.

It starts off with a pretty good offer, so that helps. Customers can get $1.50 off a beverage. That’s good enough to make fans interested, because they’re not the cheapest drinks in the world.

Another important element of this campaign is its flexibility. Users can snap a pic of a Bolthouse Farms bottle in a store, in their hand, or even just from a picture in an ad or on the web. It doesn’t matter. Customers won’t have to go too far out of their way to get the deal.

It really doesn’t even have to be a good picture. They give you some options right on their landing page, which you can take pictures of while sitting at your computer. Look at this terrible shot I just took.

Good enough for Bolthouse Farms. Also good enough for someone just wanting a discount on their drink.

Bolthouse tapped agency Tiny Rebellion for the campaign. It uses image recognition technology to recognize pictures of the brand’s products, and automatically comment on users’ uploads with “bottle recognized,” and a link to claim the coupon.

According to Mobile Marketer, the early results of the campaign have been pretty solid, and Bolthouse plans to make this their “primary response mechanism” for its marketing next year.

Instagram is rapidly gaining interest from marketers, and that’s a trend you can expect to continue for the foreseeable future. This week, Instagram finally launched on Windows Phone, opening up the already popular service to a whole new set of users. Before that launch, the user count was already up to 150 million.

Images: Bolthouse Farms