In Japan, marketers have been using QR codes for years to link offline interactions with a brand, creating a measurable connection. A typical example is placing a QR code in a print ad. The user would take a picture of the ad with a mobile phone and connect to a mobile website, or they would be sent a text message or mobile application.
Many companies have tried to get into this space over the years in the U.S., but camera phones on mobile devices were just too low quality, and surfing the web on mobile devices was very uncommon. This is changing as the U.S. begins catching up with the rest of the world. Text messaging is more common, mobile web browsing has been popularized by the iPhone, and the desire to tie together online and offline behavior is growing.
So with that in mind, I have been digging into some of the companies and technologies that are primed to take advantage of this confluence of opportunity. The good news is that all of these companies have demos of their websites and you can try it out for yourself and see how it works (at least the demo).
There are two basic technical approaches that companies are taking to this problem, and two basic user experiences on top of those approaches.
Technical approaches: Image recognition or custom tagging
The image recognition approach is very broad -- technically difficult and hard for consumers to adopt -- only because there's no inherent call-to-action. The basic idea is to take a picture of something with your camera phone, send it back against the database, match the image to an offering, and send something back to the user.
The custom tagging approach is less complex technically and has the benefit that if one format wins out, it can become a broad mechanism with a built-in. This is essentially the same thing that QR codes did in Japan. But despite lots of players in this space over a long period of time, nobody has really cracked the code -- pardon the pun.
User experiences: Installed application or SMS
The SMS approach is simple and straightforward: Snap a picture and forward that picture on to an email address, phone number, or short message code directly from the phone. In this approach, the company responds to the user with a URL, image, or file sent by SMS or MMS to their phone.
The installed application approach typically requires a smartphone that has a data plan. This approach is inherently more limited because it is limited to the number of phones that the company can get applications built for, so coverage is more limited. But the user experience in this case is much better because the application simply captures the image and immediately performs an action. So once the application is on the phone, it's as seamless a user experience as the application development team can create.
So who is doing this stuff? There are dozens of companies out there that have been chewing on this problem over the years -- so I'll just pick a handful to discuss at this point.
Two companies taking the image recognition approach in this space are SnapNow and SnapTell. These folks have taken on a huge technical challenge: letting the user simply snap a picture of any product, logo, or even a place, and matching that to some result that makes sense to them.
While SnapTell has lots of case studies, it doesn't have a live demo of the product in action. However, SnapNow does have a demo (it uses MMS, in which you take a picture, send it to their email address, and it returns URLs to click on) and it worked seamlessly.
The other companies I'll talk about have taken a QR code-like approach, each with their own proprietary tag format.
The first tag company I'll talk about is JagTag. With a strong and connected management team, and a pretty straightforward technical approach, it could be a winner. JagTag uses two-dimensional black and white bar codes that the user snaps a picture of and then sends to JagTag via MMS using a short message code. They respond with an MMS that provides either an image or a URL. The demo was a bit clunky in that it sent multiple copies of the MMS back to me, but it did function properly as far as sending the image associated with the tag.
ScanLife is another tag company, but it uses the installed application approach. I liked the fact that ScanLife not only has demos available, but it allows free registration for either a business trial account or a personal account. And you can generate your own tags, associate them with a series of actions, and try it out for yourself. In my case, I created a ScanLife tag that points to my iMedia columns. You'll need to visit ScanLife to install its EZcode scanning application and walk through a relatively extensive process of selecting which phone you have. My Samsung Epix phone wasn't listed, but the Blackjack version seemed to work fine. Once it's installed, you can give it a try by snapping a picture of my custom code right here:
I was a little disappointed with the experience. In order for their application to read the image, it required the camera to have the image in focus at a size it could read. This was a bit tricky from a computer monitor, although it might be easier on a printed page.
Microsoft has recently entered the tagging fray with an offering called the Microsoft Tag. It has a website that anyone can visit, sign up for, and use to generate Microsoft Tags. While the other companies I reviewed have two-dimensional black and white bar codes, Microsoft's are three-dimensional bar codes, with the third dimension being color. To give it a try visit the site from your mobile phone. It automatically recognized my device and installed the right version. And like ScanLife, anybody can sign up for free (at least during the beta period) and create their own tags by visiting http://tag.microsoft.com/. They're also offering free analytics/tracking of tag usage. Try it out by snapping a picture of my tag here:
The thing I liked about this solution was that it didn't matter how blurry the image was in my phone -- I was able to create a bunch of tags performing different actions, and their reader application read the tag quickly, regardless of how blurry it was.
In the end, like all new technologies with multiple competitors in the market, usually one ends up winning. But there's certainly value to jumping in and trying the technology out in your marketing campaigns. And ultimately the value of tying your customers' real-world activity back to a measurable digital touchpoint is incredibly valuable.
Eric Picard is the advertising technology advisor to the advertising platform engineering team at Microsoft.
