One of the newest marketing tools becoming highly popular in several sectors is the use of 2D bar codes. They are like bar codes but are presented in a different format (square pixels or clusters of colored triangles), they can be read by smart phones and they represent the link to a world of possibilities.
Currently there are two main competitors in this field, QR (Quick Response) codes and Microsoft Tagging, but there are other players that have developed their own versions, like Google and RIM. The possibilities these codes offer are limited by imagination and creativity, but it is clear that marketing people are definitely getting into it to take advantage of the increase use of mobile phones and moreover increased population of smartphones. It doesn’t take a lot of knowledge to be able to create one of these codes and you can make them take you many places.
Besides marketing, these codes can be found in art pieces that will link you to quotes about media or music promotion, in points of interest to interpret them, in cemeteries on graves for additional information and unite mourners, and entertainment for games interactivity.
The option Microsoft Tag offers is perhaps the most fun since its codes can be customized using images, dots instead of triangles and they can be colored. Thanks to the blog kept by Microsoft Tagging about the way the codes are being used you can see how creative the marketing industry is already being. You can do mobile couponing, enter contests, get connected to user experiences, see product description and demos, and watch videos related to products you are interested in.
And not it is only about what the creative use it will have, but where you put it. They can be found in product labels and packing, magazines, catalogs, newspapers, book covers, staff badges, signage, posters, paintings, or even as temporary tattoos in someone’s body.
If you would like to get Microsoft Tag’s application on your mobile here is the link: gettag.mobi (it is free!). You can even create your own customized tag that may as well serve as a link to your online profile, contact information, blog, social media network, website, photo album or video. And here is a short video that shows how it works.
3 réponses à “Tags and QR codes, the new trend in mobile marketing”
I think it is unfortunate that you give such prominence to Microsoft tagging. They have jumped on the bandwagon and tried to hijack QR code for there own purposes. Design QR is able to use colour, images and transparency to create imaginative QR tags that do not require you to go on Microsoft servers, where you leave your connection information by the way! I have put an example on the Moodle site. See also http://tinyurl.com/3b5j6as for some creative QRs
Thank you for your comment Nigel, the site you shared here was quite interesting! It is true, MS Tag came after QR code, and like you mention one of the disadvantages is the fact that MS gets to track your activity because the information related to the tags in on their servers, and also one more thing is that they can track your location if you are not careful enough while installing the application on your phone. But there are advantages too, the information encoding capacity is larger and the size of the tag is not as big as a QR code. While we can also encounter advantages and disadvantages for QR codes, I guess it is still early to predict who will win the market and if 2D codes will actually be as popular as barcodes for instance. However it is important to have competition in this field because us as consumers benefit from their efforts to win more market.
This is a very good way of getting information about anything and everything with a click of a button on your phone. I agree with Nigel that Microsoft has just now decided to jump on the bandwagon and companies like RIM have been using QR codes for quite some time now. I personally have used the QR code with my friends BlackBerry and there it’s used to connect people who wish to use the BBM and this will definitely make the world much more interactive, open and connected as you can get information about whatever you want. Also, I would love to create a code of my own so that my friends can get all the information about me in one go. Thanks for the information Daniela.