Facebook Places: A collage.

Are people using QR codes in Canada?

Good question. Let’s ask somebody who knows what they’re talking about. Somebody like Erik Goldhar and Ted Geatros at Toronto’s Qre8, a full service QR code strategy and execution agency.

How widespread is QR code use in Canada? Are phone carriers pre-installing scanner software here yet? What leads you to think widespread adoption is coming?

When we started QRe8.com in June of 2009 tracking down interesting and truly functional illustrative examples of QR Code applications was a bit of a challenge in Canada.

Consumer brands like Stella Artois pioneered some exciting but limited promotional tactics. Today, we have too many to chose from. Brands such as Ford, HBO, XM Satelite Radio, Air Canada, Facebook, Google, Blackberry, GMC, and many more have implemented campaigns using QR Codes.

At QRe8, we have several campaigns about to launch in 2010, including our very own real-estate industry specific marketing service, Clikbrix.com which integrates QR technology to link prospective buyers to agents and brokers.

So, QR adoption in Canada is no longer in its infancy—in fact we believe it’s now at the ‘toddler’ stage and growing fast. There are a lot of signs that support this. Read the rest of this entry »

50 uses for QR codes

Ok! You’ve generated your neat little square thing, now where should it link to?

Whether your goals are advertising, informing, galvanizing advocates or garnering Facebook ‘likes’, the QR code is ready to link up your audience to convenient, tailored, local, on-demand info, interactivity, and reasons to think you rule!

Artists

The crafty artist might link:

• from your band’s gig poster to an mp3 of your best track, or a secret remix/accoustic jam
• from your opening’s flyer to your portfolio
• from your art’s title card to your online store
• from your ad to your represenation
• to tickets for your showto a behind-the-scenes video of your process or installation (visual artists), live show (bands), movie shoot (filmmakers)
• to a trailer for your next film
• to a map of your street art installations
• from your poster to your eBay auction
• from band t-shirts to your music on iTunes
• from your band’s gig poster to your online t-shirt store, with 15% discount
• from street art to your manifesto
• from stickers to social critique
• from show flyers to your work on Flickr
• from posters to your Facebook fan page

Self-promotion/branding

The schmoozy future star might link:

• from your business card to your Facebook profile
• from your business card to your Twitter stream
• from your business card to your Linkdin account
• from your business card to your blog
• to a video interview with you (talent show!)
• from your avatar to your blog
• from your power point to your preferred social profile
• from your t-shirt to your blog’s RSS feed

Business advertising

The savvy business might link:

• to a coupon for %10 off the first visit
• to a contest
• to a useful branded app
• to your in-store card to allow payment at checkout
• from a sign in your window to reviews of your establishment
• to a video testimonial from a happy customer
• from an ad to your 1-800 order hotline
• to a Google map to your nearby locations

Products

The intriguing product might link:

• to a coupon for a freebie/sample
• to a video product demonstration
• from product to a fabulous recipe, cooking demo, or glam serving photos
• from ads to mobile shopping
• to clues for a treasure hunt
• to comparison shopping among major retailers
• to a gallery of stars (or the not-so-famous) caught using your product in public
• from your product to your customer service line
• from properties/items ‘for sale’ sign to a sales agent
• from product packaging to a mobile registration site
• to read/write a review
• to a mail-in rebate
• to nutritional info, drug interactions, or material safety data sheet
• to order refills online
• link to a video of your product being destroyed in a hilarious manner
• to a survey about your product (with a reward, natch)
• to your inventory, so you, your staff or your customers knows what’s in stock
• to a customer service or fan forum

Non-profits

The community-connected non-profit might link:

• to a donation page
• to an interactive map of your org’s work throughout your city
• to an augmented reality view of your city’s issues
• to sponsorship opportunities
• to a video of a successful user of your org’s services saying thanks
• from notable landmarks to informative videos of your city’s history
• to mobile updates on disaster situations
• to requests for supplies and volunteers
• to a petition
• to contact your government about an advocacy issue
• to a hotline providing hope

What are QR codes?

If you’re reading this from Japan, you’re going to roll your eyes at me being Betty Rubble and living in Bedrock over here, but I’m getting intrigued by QR codes and am praying for their widespread adoption in Canada sometime soon.

Print advertising—magazines, direct mail, transit—has always engendered a sinking feeling of futility in my conversion-sensitive stomach. Creative teams bust their balls to conceive and execute an idea meant to motivate an audience to do something, but the disconnect between seeing an ad and acting on it is just hopelessly huge in these attention-starved times. I am just not going to go home and type in a URL I saw on a billboard. I don’t remember it and I don’t care about it anymore by the time I’ve got the leisure to look it up.

Groovy little portals to the future

Enter the QR code, a simple bar code readable by any phone with a camera & a scanner App. Spy a code on a flyer, tv show, magazine or poster & with a quick wave of your cell, you’re whisked to a mobile site providing the instant opportunity to:

• Make a donation to a cause
• Buy tickets to an event
• Watch a movie trailer, documentary clip, or interview
• Like a Facebook page
• Enter a contest
• Get a map
• Download an app
• Read current information about a person, place or thing
• Pay for stuff
  

Wow, hey? No more barriers to conversion. Act now while you’re in the mood! The best example I read, and I’m pretty sure this is fantasy island stuff except in Jetsonsesque Japan, was the ability to stand around a movie store scanning boxes and watching movie trailers. I’m not sure there’ll be movie stores by the time this technology is widespread in North America, but you get the picture. Literally, ha.

QR Code 101: the Basics

Here are some neato things I’ve learned about QR codes.

• QR codes link real world objects (anything that can be printed on or scotch-taped to or broadcast) to online destinations
• A link from the real world to the internet is called a hardlink, which sounds cool
• The practice of using these things is called mobile tagging
• QR codes are free and easy to generate
• Codes can link to a URL, or decode into text, a phone number (which on the iPhone at least, calls the number), or an SMS
• QR codes are not secure, so don’t put your freakin’ secrets on ‘em
• Your phone needs an App to read codes
• In Japan, phones come with scanner Apps. That’s kind of the holdup in North America
• Your phone can read a code off a computer, tv screen, or LCD/LED billboard, along with printed codes
• Designers: the white space around a code is part of the code. Don’t be croppin’ it

While the code reading experience is nifty, and marketers’ll be able to capitalize on sheer novelty for a while, the mobile experience the person is taken to is 80% of the interaction. You must not suck here. You must not make someone drag out there phone to get “more”, and give them less (ie, your not-even-a-mobile-site-totally-normal-website. That would be bad).

At the very least have your website streamlined for mobile by a cool interactive agency. With 23,000,000 mobile phones in Canada, this is gonna become an issue shortly anyway.

Not having encountered QR codes in Winnipeg, I couldn’t imagine why such a groovy, futuristic technology that finally, finally married the internet to real life wasn’t super enormous, so I asked cool Toronto QR agency QRe8 what’s going on. I hope to have an interview with them up shortly.

Non-profits and the mobile web

I’ve always liked Salvation Army’s advertising. It’s stark, a bit shocking, makes you uncomfortable. It’s about poverty.

Fundraising advertising needs to conjure up a pretty powerful scenario to be effective. Something like:

What if you were out getting a bagel at lunch, walked under a bridge and someone lived there? There you are, talking on your iPhone, strolling through somebody’s bedroom. Confronted by your own comparative wealth. You’d probably feel moved to make a “donation” right there.

During a fundraising campaign, advertising tries to recreate that feeling. Salvation Army is trying to bring you into that moment, and remind you there’s a way to help.

The potential donor must then sustain that generous urge until they can get themselves to an envelope, or a hotline, or dig out their credit card and start typin’. A lot to ask of a piece of advertising.

Fortunately, communications has undergone a tremendous upgrade in the past two years. Through mobile devices and the location-based services they make available, donors can now be hit in the gut and the wallet at the same time. “For this new generation of donors, pop culture, public discourse, social media, and charity all run through the same router“. There’s finally a convergence of need, attention, and the ability to give.

Generation X and the Millennials don’t want to go through the trouble of entering a 16-digit credit card number to make a $25 donation.

Melissa Brown, associate director of research at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University

This became crystal clear when $1 000 000/day was raised through texting in the week after the Haiti earthquake.

Charitable giving is a dopamine bonanza, and the speed with which mobile can deliver the hit makes it extra rewarding. We give because it feels great, but we need instant gratification.

Mobile usage in Canada is at least 22 million (2008), or about 65% of the population, with no doubt increases in the years since and to come. This represents a huge opportunity for non-profits to have a conversation with donors at the right time and in the right place. When need strikes, the solution can be presented quickly—a win win for everyone.

Ideas for transforming giving with the mobile web:

• Mobile reporting from disaster areas on Twitter. Include a text-to-give number for immediate relief & relay the results.
• Foursquare check-ins at volunteer or fundraising events. Connect with a sponsor who will donate 25¢ for every check-in.
• iPhone App-guided tours of your work with simple examples of the benefit a $5 donation can make, and the ability to make that donation. Seeing the connection between good work and a few dollars in the flesh can be very compelling.
• Requests for donation of Twitter and Facebook status with text-to-give info when need is great.

Early adoption of the mobile web can get attention for your cause if it’s creative and picked up by the social media marketing community. More than that, it provides a better experience for donors who want to engage with your org. Have a mobile site created that streamlines an informative donation process for them. Attention is so scarce that anything less is a roadblock to giving.

People still want news: on demand, tailored & interactive

Despite all the moaning about dying print publications, people are still eager to absorb daily news. What they expect out of the experience has changed, though, according to a new Pew Research Center report. Now people want multi-platform news on demand, customized, and spreadable.

What should you do with your advertising budget in 2010?

The spread of smartphones and location-aware mobile technology is opening up a (smaller) world of local marketing possibilities.

3 words: location, location, location. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

You’re the CEO, Senior VP of Marketing, and Chief Janitor of your very own local small business. You typically place an ad in the yellow pages, stuff a few dayglo flyers in mailboxes, and have a brochure website with an infrequently-updated ‘news’ section (because frankly, you can’t think of a whole lot of news with which to fascinate the public). You’ve heard of this new-fangled socialized media thing, but near as you can tell it’s all retired ladies stalking their in-laws and teenagers sending untoward photos to each other. But you also hear it costs less than fluorescent photocopies.

With major marketing superpowers like Pepsi skipping the superbowl and Coke basically declaring websites obsolete in order to refocus ad dollars on social media, Local Small Businessmen can safely assume the research is in, and traditional advertising isn’t. Social media is officially a great publicity channel. But what makes 2010 the year to dive in? Read the rest of this entry »