Barcode Talk

Now even aliens can get in on the QR act, assuming that, like Steven Spielberg’s cute extra-terrestrial, they understand how to use a phone.  It’s all thanks to Blue Marble™, which is offering businesses the opportunity to transform their rooftops into billboards containing QR codes that can be seen from space.  Of course, the prime focus of the endeavour is to help businesses promote themselves via leading navigation applications like Google Earth® and Google Maps® but, should those little green men from Mars wish to start trading with our businesses and boost the economy in 2012, we won’t turn them away.

QR continues to get a rough ride from journalists and bloggers who claim that these codes are not suitable for advertising and marketing, that the public don’t understand them, and that there is little creativity in their usage. A recent example comes from commentator Sean X Cummins:

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Cummins conducted an informal street survey that challenged participants to correctly identify and put a name to the QR code and, while the venture revealed some amusing responses from those who interpreted the little black blocks as hypnotic 3D images or coded messages used by the military, 40% of those canvassed did successfully recognise the image as a QR or bar code.

Cummins is right to question the use of QR codes on moving buses and roadside billboards given that the majority of those canvassed were not yet sufficiently ‘quick on the draw’ to gather information from such locations but, despite the negative angle of the article, it seems that awareness of QR is growing apace. And, as all observers of modern technology know, when the tipping point is reached between novelty and accepted norm, the scales can move very, very fast.

Frequent fliers with Scandinavian airline SAS will soon be able to enjoy quicker check-in and boarding using contactless stickers.  50,000 of the operator’s most loyal customers are to be issued with the stickers to attach to the back of their phone.  Tapping them on readers at boarding gates will automatically transmit the owner’s membership number, enabling airline staff to call up their flight details more quickly.

Kristine Mayer, strategic project manager at SAS and project manager of the Smart Pass service, said, “It is a natural step to use the mobile phone to identify the journey through the airport because it one of the items that passengers have easily accessible when travelling.”

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First, viewers were invited to write in with a stamped addressed envelope and request a leaflet, then websites published details.  Now QR codes are making the job of gathering instructions and lists of ingredients for recipes on cookery programmes even simpler.  BBC show The Good Cook has begun floating a QR code after demonstrating how to prepare each dish, enabling viewers to download recipes there and then.  Suddenly, seeking out a recipe at a website belonging to another cookery programme that does not offer a QR code seems an effort, particularly when there is no guarantee that it will be there at all…

Screen shot from 'The Good Cook'

Marketing Week presented a bleak picture of QR this month but, reading between the lines, they’re really only saying what we’ve said here already, which is that capitalising on QR is not just a matter of slapping a code on a mail shot and waiting for customers to come running.

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Although only a minority of respondents to the market research survey quoted in Marketing Week claimed to understand QR, almost half of those canvassed were very positive about the technology.  The real story, as touched on towards the end of the article, is that marketers need to educate and inform consumers about their purpose rather than simply adding QR codes to their products and their advertising campaigns.

Interestingly, in the paper copy of the magazine this article sits opposite an advert for “booqi”, a system that uses webcam and some special software to scan a card or bit of marketing material and then ‘recognise’ the media via booqi’s website.  Seems a complicated job, particularly when viewed alongside an article that claims many of us still haven’t grasped the far simpler concept of QR.

The QR debate continues to rage on.  Some disregard it, some are evangelical about it, but, whatever your opinion of QR, the ongoing conversation continues to throw up some interesting views and ideas, such as those contained in this piece by David Meerman Scott:

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While Scott doesn’t claim that QR codes will have the same uptake as websites or Twitter, he argues the case for using the codes as a marketing tool, not least because they appeal to our geeky streak (a growing affliction now that items such as smart phones are so ubiquitous).

David Meerman Scott describes himself as a practitioner of ‘thought leadership’ and, though this title may sound disturbingly Orwellian, he certainly has some useful, positive ideas for QR, such as popping a code onto a slide in your next presentation, enabling members of your audience to download supplemental information, instead of burdening them with hard-copy handouts.  Scott also has a creative attitude to QR; one of his intentionally provocative suggestions is for geeky singles who wants to meet other geeky singles to wear QR codes that send prospective dates some interesting web-based information about themselves so they can get to know each other sooner.  Could this be taking the term ‘quick response’ a little too far?

There are sales tactics and then there are sales tactics, but when fiction is peddled as facts into downloadable e-books we just can’t keep silent. This latest attack on the tried and tested bar coding technology comes from an American RFID software developer, with the title ‘Barcode Asset Tracking is for losers. Their (feeble) corollary is that using bar code technology can lead to errors (please find me a 100% error free system – any – and certainly not RFID!). This would then lead to loss of stock and eventually even loss of one’s job, thus ‘losers’ – get it?

For years we have maintained that there is ample room for both technologies to live successfully side by side and we don’t want to elaborate on the well-known drawbacks of RFID, or we shall have to publish our own e-book on the topic (with an appropriate slant), though if you really insist you can check out this article. We are, however, somewhat disappointed that the tone of an otherwise interesting debate has been brought down to its lowest common denominator merely in an attempt to augment sales.

It’s not just a matter of slapping a bar code on a mail shot and waiting for customers to come running.  Tools as powerful as QR still need a bit of thought, as this article points out.

The trouble is, marketing departments don’t always think how to use the codes effectively.  In a mailshot, you should add a unique code to each printed barcode so you can see who responded – a unique QR barcode for everyone, in fact.  Instead of just jumping on the QR bandwagon, marketers need to think about the application.  For example, if you’re scanning a bottle of beer, chances are you’re away from your PC and on a mobile phone so the content should be mobile-orientated.

Here’s an example of how QR codes can be used effectively, targeting people in the right place at the right time and succeeding in providing a really useful and important service.

It’s not every day that someone invites you to photograph their bottom but two British volleyball stars have hired their hinds to advertisers via the use of a QR code printed on the rear of their shorts.  Any photographer who snaps Zara Dampney or Shauna Mullin’s skimpy bikini briefs from behind with a smartphone is taken to a sponsor’s website and offered a deal.  A great idea for the sponsors but maybe not so good for the status of British volleyball.

Zara Dampney, 24, and Shauna Mullin, 26

“We go to countries such as Brazil, Germany and the USA where beach volleyball is a recognized sport like football or rugby is in England,” Mullin told The Sun.  “But here in England we are still stuck at the stage where people think beach volleyball is about sex, not a sport.”

Keep puzzling over that one, Shauna.