I am a firm believer that QRCodes present a great opportunity for marketing purposes, it’s just that the desire to use and interact with a QRCode, on a mass scale has not been identified. Sure, there have been a lot of successes with QRCodes over the years, but within niche and relatively small groups.

As a consumer there needs to be a real desire to interact with a QRCode. Without that desire why would I purposely download an app in order to use them. The vast majority of QRCode still seem to encode a static URL, and that creates very little value in my opinion. It would take me less time to simply type into my browser and visit the company’s website, opposed to downloading an app, scanning the app and then being taken to the company’s website.

Personally, I think that the opportunity with advertising is stronger. Imagine me receiving my monthly tech magazine (which I subscribe to) and then within the pages are QRCodes alongside articles and advertisements. If I were then to scan a QRCode against the latest DELL laptop, lets say, I would be taken to a personalized microsite which welcomes me; knowing that I have visited that site only because of me scanning my personalized QRCode. It then either present more information about the product in question, or stores that as a ‘favorite’ and allows me to scan several more codes, before collating all my interests together and presenting back to me a personalized PDF or email with relevant product details, offers, and retailers in my area. The growth in the tablet marketing could well fuel this adoption.

This would first present me with some value, easier access to relevant and timely content, and present the publisher with an increased ROI because they are generating measurable interest from an advertisement.

Imagine a tradeshow, with QRCodes on all the exhibitioner’s stands. Whilst walking around and interacting with various suppliers I could scan the QRCodes. It’s then easy for the show organisers to see exactly what I have expressed an interest in, and present me make all the information that I need post-show directly to me.

There’s still a need for mobile phone manufacturers to embed the scanning technology within the base OS – but this may not happen. In the meantime the responsibility lies with the marketers to create QRCode campaigns that absolutely add value. Please no more QRCode on fizzy drink cans that simply take me to a mobile version of their website? Why would I want to do that? Even if I had a QRCode app on my phone?

As there is a growing buzz around the use of QRCodes I thought that I would create a real-world concept that could be used.  

QRCodes, as we know are fantastic at bridging the offline and online world. Unfortunately many marketeers still seem to be stuck in a rut of using them to bring people to a generic landing page. This is just one use. Personally I like to explore the more interesting concepts of what can be achieved using QRCodes.

This concept is to take the humble advertising billboard or poster. Traditionally used to promote brands and offers. Well, what about creating relevant, location based brand awareness? I have used a well know retailer for this example, Next. What if Next had the following poster outside Picadilly Circus Underground Station in London? There’s a Next store just 15 minutes walk away – but you wouldn’t know that unless you had seeked out that knowledge previously.

Well what about a billboard or poster showing the brand as well as directing people to the nearest store? Passers-by could scan the code, and immediately be directed to Google Maps to show them the walking directions to the nearest store. Because we know the actually location of the advertisement, we can using the correct location.

The Google Maps API is easy used.

http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=start&daddr=end&dirflg=w

The start should be the starting location,
The end should be the ending location,
The dirflag=w simply indicates that we want walking directions.

We can simply use a database of starting locations, ending locations, store names and store images. Using this together with XMPie we can completely create the example shown. XMPie’s uDirect can connect to the database and read in each line, using the correct store image, and producing the correct QRCode for the Goggle Map route. For a quick video on how easy it is to use XMPie to create QRCode click here.

The hard work, needed upfront is building the database of known advertising point locations, and their respective nearest store. It’s probably best to use longitude and latitude points opposed to  street names and postcodes, as these can be slightly ambiguous at times, as I found out during my tests.

Further use

To extend this example – you could use the QRCode to bring visitors into a relevant landing page – personalised for the nearest store, showing and relevant offers as well as offering the walking directions. This landing page is not a typical PURL (or RURL) as we do not know the person that is visiting the page. However you could create a Group URL (GURL) showing the visitor a site which has been versioned for the local store. This could then be used to collect data, offer local incentives or simply provide tracking and directions.

In conclusion

Personalisation of this sorts tends to be within the hands of cut-sheet printers – well why not use it in a wide-format environment, and start producing relevant wide-format advertising material. In this example, using QRCodes could add significant value back to the end-client, to engage and drive visitors to their stores, as well as providing  tracking and reporting. The same principle can also be used for driving visitors to local attractions and sites.

I’ve spoken to various creatives, service providers and marketers about this technology over the past few months; admittedly because XMPie now supports the technology directly inside uDirect. Whilst they all seem excited about the prospect of this technology very few that I can see are actually using it creatively or at all. There’s a very useful site at http://2d-code.co.uk which covers alot of the technology, as well as many of the examples of where 2D barcodes have been used.

Now that XMPie supports the use of PDF417, AztecCode, DataMatrix, MaxiCode, MicroPDF and QRCodes directly within the uDirect InDesign CS plugin it is easy to insert personalised data into a 2D barcode and place it on a printed piece. This obviously means that any data (from a datasource) can be used to create a 2D barcode. Want to create a 2D barcode that contains someone’s RURL or personalised URL so you negate the need to have them type it in? What about embedded personalised information about a recipient within a voucher code, presented as a 2D barcode?

It’s not an insignificant fact that XMPie’s approach to QR Code is easy. XMPie’s ADOR technology means that any data and logic contained within the data can be used repeatable and consistently within the campaign and QR Codes.

One of the biggest factors holding back the adoption of this technology is the support for barcode readers already installed on the mobile devices – so the initial campaigns need to provide enough of an incentive to get people to spend the time and install one. However with most smart phones and camera-enabled phones capable of supporting QR-Code capture this is rapidly becoming a non-issue.

Hopefully those creatives that would like to implement some form of support with a DM piece or personalised campaign should be able to do so a lot easier now, as all the various commercial printers and service providers that already have XMPie now have this ability. ” Ta Dah”.  All it needs now is a forward-thinking creative team to come up with some good campaign material.

Any takers?

From directly inside InDesign CS3 and CS4 XMPie’s uDirect plugin has the ability of generating and placing a barcode within the design. I blogged about this a while ago. However this is limited to using those barcodes within the printed piece. I was thinking about how you could use them online, or in an email communication, or even creating them on-mass to use in another process.

Most people seem to be content in creating single QRCodes that are then used. But what about if you want a QRCode to contain a personalised URL, or a unique piece of information linked to that the recipient?

Well, here’s one idea to create barcodes on mass by using XMPie:

• Fire up InDesign with the XMPie plugin activated. (you can always get the 30-day free trial from www.xmpie.com)
• Create a new document of say 50mm by 50mm
• Connect to your database of recipients, or simple create a Counter and use that
• Create a new image ‘Content Object’, call it QRCode, and set the expression to use the fields of your choosing.
• Place the QRCode content object on the page and change the Dynamic Graphic Properties to ‘Fill proportionally and Centered’
• Save the document
• Select ‘Dynamic Print’ in the XMPie Palette and choose, JPG (or PDF) as the output format.
• Select your output destination and records, and hit ‘OK’
• Job done. You should have individual JPG/PDF files in the output destination folder named {filename}_r{record number}_p001.jpg

The only real drawback here is that the files are not named in a fashion that relates to their contents. It would be great if you could produce them based on an element in the database, like you can with personalised images through uImage. Having said that, you can still work productive in this manner, it just needs more careful thought.

Another reason to use XMPie I think!

Recently I heard about Microsoft Tag, Microsoft’s own 2D Barcode technology. At first sight it would seem that Microsoft has simply reinvented the wheel and created another style of 2D Barcode; however looking closely things seem slightly different.

For starters a Microsoft tag actually uses less space to encode a single byte of information; using different coloured triangles opposed to black/white squares.

Secondly it produces smaller sized codes as you can see below:

What’s more interesting is that Microsoft Tags do not actually encode the data (URL or other text) inside the mark. What they actually do is contain a unique reference which needs to be decoded my a Microsoft Server; which in turn points to the actual URL or reference point.

Using a server in this way effectively allows you to track the usage of a code within the field – by analysing the server you can see how many people have used the mark etc.

So in essence Microsoft have not reinvented the wheel; this is a new technology.

But wait; hold the boat one second. Microsoft Tags are unique effectively because they allow a managed and traceable service. However refer back to my original posting and you will see that my using standard QR-Code and a Cross Media Marketing tool; such as XMPie PersonalEffect you can easily create personalised QR-Code, that contain a unique URL (personalised or response URL).

Thus you can create unique codes, and then include then within your campaign. Add to the mix XMPie’s Marketing Dashboard; you can then track how successful the QR-Code has been within a campaign – not just one element to a campaign. The power of integration wins again!

So, in conclusion …. it is better (in my opinion) to stick with QR-Code as they allow you to encode a greater variety of information (URL, SMS, VCARD etc) and track their use within an integrated campaign tool.