Creating valid QR Code Marketing Campaigns

PLUSH MS Blog
Thursday, September 10, 2009
In response to: Do-It-Yourself QR Codes: A 4-Step Guide
By Jeffrey Inscho
From: Philip Warbasse of Warbasse Design

Hi Jeffrey,

Great post. You wrote - "If you think there are better ways, or workarounds, please share in the comments to the post." There are a couple of very important points that need to be made which greatly effect, not only the utility of any given mobile strategy, but also the acceptance of this new technology from a cultural perspective.

2D Barcodes are the messenger and nothing more. They don't "support" anything. They bring us to content by scanning a tag vs. typing in a url or some other form of text-data. They make accessing content easy, creating one of the first "digital bridges" between the real and the virtual.

My design firm has been creating 2D marketing strategies for nearly 3 years now and we have learned a lot. I hope these tips will help you understand why a good consulting firm is still very important in mobile marketing. I am, however, a proponent of doing things for oneself, thus I am writing this to help artists make their own way. Additionally, I am throwing in some assistance at the end of this post for anyone who needs it.

You wrote - "The codes we place throughout the galleries contain rich multi-media content... We upload video files to YouTube, behind-the-scenes still images to Flickr, and informative text-based PDF files, all of which are supported by QR code technology." The truth is "QR Code technology" does not support any of the afore-mentioned media types. Actually, it is the user's handset that will determine whether a certain file type will be supported and this is a common misconception. The problem is magnified when those who have a poor user experience blame it on the code instead of the content and stop making use of QR codes when they see them because, in the past, they could not access something - at best, or, their phone crashed - at worst. Content becomes an extremely important consideration when creating any mobile campaign.

If one works in the Entertainment Industry in Los Angeles, it's easy to get caught up in the iphone craze - we all have one. But, the truth is most American's don't. Slowly more phones are coming out with the ability (both in terms of operating specs and software) to handle the things we have taken for granted on our desktops for so long, such as streaming audio and playing Flash files.

A good 2D barcode campaign begins with creating a seamless, positive user experience for anyone who scans a code. In order to do this we need to consider our audience. In mobile marketing audience = handheld device. The major questions we want answered when any user accesses one of our mobile campaigns are 1.) What's the phone's Operating System? - RIM, PALM, Windows, iphone, etc. 2.) What is running on the phone? - available software. 3.) What are the dimensions of the user's screen?- phone's resolution. Knowing the answers to these questions can prove to be the difference between a great vs. a poor mobile experience.

In preparing the presentation layer, we will consider the usable screen space on a handheld device and render the presentation to fit the screen. Then we prepare the content. This means that if we want to tie-in a video, like the trailer for the movie 9, we need to make multiple file formats of the same trailer available. This allows us to deliver the appropriate file type to the correct phone (.mp4 for iphone, .avi for Blackberry, .wmv for Windows Mobile, etc). Simply pointing to a "web-optimized" YouTube page is the worst thing one can do.

Once the media is on a server, we still have a big hurdle to get over and that is having a server intelligent enough to know what to deliver to the user when they come "knocking".

In order for a social tipping point to be achieved in the States for 2D barcodes, users must get what they come for. The bottom line is that my firm is so concerned with the user experience behind QR Codes and the social tipping point that could be impacted, that we have created a new Intelligent Mobile Server called PLUSH-MS. PLUSH-MS use the open source index WURFL and proprietary software to instantaneously determine a user's handset, thus delivering optimized content on the fly. This way, no matter what phone a user chooses to access the campaign - it works.