There are quite a few things that the popular imagination has been promising us for some time now. Visions of the future have included everything from flying cars, to full meal vending machines, to robotic maids (those little vacuum cleaners don’t count). However, there is a burgeoning technology that makes good on some of our flights of futuristic fancy: the QR code.
QR codes (properly, Quick Response Codes) consist of tiny black and white squares that look like some sort of digitized postage stamp. The QR code is similar to a barcode. Once scanned, it delivers information. However, QR Codes can handle more information than a traditional barcode, and the applications are astounding. To access the information housed within the code all you need is a free QR code reader app available across a wide range of mobile devices. Get one of these, scan the code, and boom… you are wherever the code’s creator wanted to take you.
It seems everybody is putting these QR codes to use. More and more we see the codes in publications, recently we received a home magazine featuring a QR code attached to an advertisement. Once scanned, the code took you to a section of the advertiser’s website that provided more information on what the ad was selling, along with a video. This advertiser had discovered the key to integrating conventional and new media: they had merged their print advertising with the web. They also realized how potent video is as a sale and outreach tool and made certain to have one waiting for users once they scanned the code. Heck, I even saw one on the back of the fastest girl on two wheels at the International Motorcycle show. In fact, QR codes were everywhere at the trade show which helped visitors scan and load up videos for fututure video playback. Generating any ideas yet?
Start looking around on a daily basis and you are certain to find QR codes. A business across the street from our office has a QR code on their window, so that after hours traffic has a way to look inside. Realtors have been putting QR codes to use by including them on “For Sale” signs; they can’t always be there to show the property, but a quick scan and a potential buyer is taken to a video tour of it. Television commercials will, more and more often, display QR codes. We can recall a recent commercial for the brilliant film “Inception” that sprang a QR code up for users to scan and enter a website taking the curious into deeper layers of the premise. QR codes are finding their way onto business cards, billboards; heck, I was eating a pint of ice cream the other night, only to notice a QR code on its side (no, I didn’t scan it as I was too preoccupied with my own gluttony). The point is, these things are everywhere, and are opening advertising and brand engagement doors.
The future is now. QR codes are making it exceptionally easy for interested parties to obtain more information anytime, anywhere. Interested in fusing this technology with video and taking your marketing into the next evolutionary stages? Give us a call at 708.354.1200
