Actual data: 7.42% of Manitobans are likely to scan your QR code ad.

The lovely folks at Probe Research sent me a survey they’ve prepared for the Canadian Marketing Association on QR code usage in Manitoba. Here’s the results (sample size: 1000 adults).

Awareness of QR codes

More than half of the adult population (53%) has seen a QR code somewhere in the past month. Those who tend to be more familiar with these codes include:

• Urban dwellers (57% Winnipeg residents, versus 47% of those outside Winnipeg)
• Younger Manitobans aged 18-34 years (69%, compared to 58% among those aged 35-54 years and 33% of those aged 55 years and over)
• Those earning higher household incomes (66% of those earning more than $100,000/year)
• University and college graduates (62%)

How many people have actually scanned a code?

Only 14% of those who recalled seeing a QR code say that they have actually scanned a code with their smartphones.

Younger Manitobans (22% of those aged 18-34 years, compared to 6% of those aged 55 years and over) & men (20%, versus 8% of women) were more likely to have scanned these codes at some point.

14% of the 53% who can recognize a code is 7.42% of the general population who’re likely to scan your ad in Manitoba.

This is fairly close to the number of Manitobans on Twitter but less than a 1/3 of the number with smartphones, so I think we’re seeing a certain niche the format works for—youngish, affluent, educated guys.

Damn good #copywriting: Special Pants.

In an age of social media peer-to-peer hoopla (that’s a good link, click that one), this sign is a shining example of the still-valid power of the good old fashioned ad.

Special pants? You don’t say! Where can I get me some of these special pants?

2 digital #marketing lessons we can learn from 2d barcodes (that have nothing to do with 2d barcodes).

My recent immersion in QRcodeland gave me a couple insights into truisms of broader digital marketing.

Whether barcode scanning takes off or not, asking people to interact with your brand online by any method requires you to make things very easy for them, and very rewarding.

1. There has to be a payoff. For the customer.

Many otherwise beautiful, interesting, and well designed IRL-to-digital campaigns are roasted by the likes of Roger Marquis for not making user participation worth the effort.

A crappy (read: boring, useless, overly commercial or non-mobile) “scan resolve”—the thing you get or place you go for scanning a code—ticks people off for wasting their time and does the practice of scanning (or “making the effort to go to a website”) no favours.

Any ad that leads people to a website has to have a fat reward. People have mustered up their time, attention & effort to follow through on your call to action. Don’t bore them by sending them to your brochure-with-a-slideshow for “more information”. Give them a #$%@!! coupon.

Case study: Magnum Ice Cream paid big CPE dollars (one hopes) to own a piece of hashtag history. What did they do with this precious number one slot? Not a lot.

Lesson: Convert people (and it takes more than a trip to your precious website to do it), for Pete’s sake. Go out of your way to own my next ice cream purchase with an offer I can’t refuse.

2. Explain the payoff. Clearly.

The wisdom of 2d barcode communication design: even if your audience is people who sleep with their iPhones under their pillows (in airplane mode, relax), you need to explain the value proposition of packing up the donkeys & sherpa-ing up the mountain to your website.

People may know how to get there, but why should they bother? Are you gonna give them a deal? Enter them in a contest? Show them an exclusive (and saucy, for good measure) video? Sell it, copywriters!

Case study: Pampers diapers come packed in a plastic bag that includes a code you can go enter on their website.

Presumably this code gets you something good. I’ve never entered one. I’ve fastidiously saved the stupid plastic bags 10 inches from my laptop, intending on entering the code “when I have time”…and never quite getting there.

What’s holding me up? Don’t I want…whatever it is I’ll get?

Apparently not enough. I haven’t been sold on what’s in it for me. Maybe the box says what I’ll get, but the “point of action” doesn’t answer these questions: How hard is this whole code thingy? Am I going to need to enter my personal information? Sign up for something? Collect 100 diaper box codes before I get my $2 rebate?

Without the reward in my mind, I can’t be bothered to find out.

Lesson: Sell people on what they’re going to get when they choose to interact with you (ie, the benefit). Don’t expect them to know how to boil ravioli.

It ain’t just semantics.

In a (marketing) meeting the other day I referred to the way we expressed an idea as “semantic”.

The reaction to this was as if I had belittled a distinction as “just semantics” (something people say when they think you’re quibbling over words that don’t really matter). Dictionary.com’s own usage example includes this common derogation.

On the contrary, semantics matter a lot, especially to marketers. A linguistic theory called the “Sapir Whorf Hypothesis” states that language affects the way people think. Words colour your concept of a thing & its potential.

Not to be all Seth-Godin-state-the-bleeding-obvious, but isn’t that theory talking about the very cultural encoding marketing seeks to affect?

We try to “own” categories, to “rank” for keywords, to “brand” the way people talk about us. We reiterate, restate and cleverly dictate (advertising) what we want people to think about us, and try to lead the discourse in brand categories (semantic domains). We’re using adjectives, superlatives, vocabulary to dominate “mindshare”. The biggest marketing revolution in __ years is about starting & managing “conversation”.

Semantics win hearts and minds. Semantics matter. A lot.

Winnipeg’s broken windows.

I don’t mean to rag on our beloved Peg here, but I couldn’t help but draw a comparison with Toronto’s shiny, happy posters and Winnipeg’s bleak public advertising space as I walked a scaffolded block in the Exchange yesterday.

Besides the cultural commentary implicit here, I have something darker to discuss.

There’s a sociological theory called “Broken Windows” that basically explains visual disrepair is an invitation to crime. If you let a street have broken windows, it signals there’s no one there and that no one cares. If not for the fact that this scaffolding actually encases the Public Safety Building, I’d be kinda antsy to walk through it.

The new University of Winnipeg Buhler Centre / Plugin Institute of Contemporary Art handled this issue beautifully by painting their scaffolding in funky, stripey colours. They created a stimulating, visually engaging, vibrant public space that said “Winnipeg is growing”.

Poster advertising: noting a difference between Winnipeg & Toronto audiences.

Winnipeg—with its lower, older population and walkby traffic, decentralized outdoor spaces, car culture, infrequent downtown development and frigid winter—doesn’t have the same level of of ground-level outdoor advertising (re: posters) as larger urban centres.

While their certainly are posters for bands and cultural events (a focus Winnipeggers can be proud of), brandvertising makes less of an appearance on our boarded-up walkways. What we noticed in Toronto, though, was the tone of the ads turned way up. Boobies, pseudo curse words, and other titillations prevailed.

My husband theorized this is in the interest of combating visual noise—when there’s just more of everything, everything has to go up a notch, from retail display, to ad messages, to clothing, volume & visuals.

Here’s a sense of what I mean—I know these are hardly shocking, but taken all together you start to wonder about advertiser’s perceptions of their markets.

Did you note the QR code in there?

I love  the high energy created by the media-saturated environment. Abundant messages suggest abundant people to receive them, creating the sense of something happening

Facebook’s forbidden feminist fruit.

Facebook has an advertising policy that I respect: don’t use pictures of hot women to sell your product, unless your product is hot women.

It decreases the sleaze factor of advertising while serving the audience by making ad graphics more relevant, and thus less painful (in the time-wasting sense) to click.

I have sort of an augmented reality vision now, where I see social media as a layer overtop of everything, even snacks.