Bridging the Gap Between Online and Print

You may have noticed in recent months the appearance of mysterious, bitmap-like symbols in print ads, signage and product packaging. Well, brace yourself to see even more of these cuties in the near future; now that smart phones equipped with decent cameras have taken the world by storm, the stage is set for yet another marketing revolution — QR Codes®.

What are they? QR (short for Quick Response) Codes, a registered trademark of Denso Wave Incorporated, are two-dimensional barcodes that have information embedded in many boxy "pixels." Because the codes are read both horizontally and vertically, they can contain much more information than old-school barcodes with their skinny vertical lines that read left to right. And more information means more capabilities for marketers.

Originally developed in the "90s by the Denso Corporation of Japan as an inventory management tool, QR Codes have become the darlings of marketers in Japan and Europe, largely because their creators opted to make them open source, allowing anyone to use QR Codes for free.

What can QR Codes do?

QR Codes are all about function, and accordingly several service types are available. From a marketing standpoint, some of the more useful types of QR Codes are those that:

• Show text – An address or a special offer will appear, such as "Get 20% off when you show this message at the register!"
• Initiate a browser session – Traffic can be driven to a Website while improving the advertiser"s ability to track a print piece’s performance.
• Initiate an e-mail – The "send to" address and subject line can be automatically pre-populated.
• Share contact info – A QR Code can be printed on the back of a business card that contains the contact information from the front of the card, allowing people to scan and store (at their option) the contact directly into their phone’s address book.
• Initiate a text message (SMS) – You can scan a QR Code to vote for your favorite flavor, product name, contestant, etc., or even donate to a cause.
• Initiate an audio stream – A music venue could include a QR Code that plays a 10-second sample of the featured band’s music on a poster advertising an upcoming performance.
• Initiate a video stream – Savvy agents could include a QR Code on a real estate sign or flyer that when scanned, streams a video of the home’s interior features, enabling shoppers to determine on the spot whether they’d like to schedule a tour of the property.