Few days ago, while I was reading a Mid-day newspaper my eyes got glued onto a tiny black and white pixelated square image, on the corner of an advertisement. I had seen such kinds of image, several times before but was never really interested to know more about it. But this time something strange had happened. I started noticing similar kinds of image in Magazines, Television ads, and in many other newspapers, which made me curious to know, what exactly these images were all about.
I’m sure some of you might be having a rough idea about these images, but for rest of us, the image which I’m talking about is known as “QR codes”. QR code stands for “Quick Response Code. It is a 2D image, a type of matrix barcode. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. I was surprised to find out the usability of such codes, and the amount of information it can store. You can encrypt addresses of URL’s, text or any type of data such as business cards, phone numbers, e-mail address or information about a product. The best part is that, these codes can be printed on any surface be it a newspaper, magazine, hoardings, etc.
QR code was basically designed for the automotive industry. Japan was the first country to make use of these codes in 1994. Other western countries followed it. Japan is still the largest user of QR codes, with its adaptation slowly being made into other countries, due to its fast readability and comparatively large storage capacity.
These codes have lately picked up momentum and are becoming quite popular in Indian markets for promoting products and services. The probable key reason being that the ‘customer’ in India is young and technology savvy. To read a QR code all you need is bar code reading device or a smart phone which has a camera and a bar code reading application installed in it. There are various sites available on the internet which generates free QR code and its really easy to do so. For example I tried creating a QR code for this post, If you were to scan this image below, you would get the title of this post as a message.
According to survey done by Google, India is among top 10 countries in world to be using this technology. The early adopters of the technology in India range from food, hospitality, retailing to automobile, telecom and technology sectors. Kim Saldanha, vice-president, marketing, Customer Centria, says, "QR codes are turning out to be the perfect marketing package - a brief, compact, message driver and engagement tool - all loaded in one single code." The company Customer Centria has worked on engagement programs using QR codes for various campaigns like Godrej Gojiyo, Taj holiday packages branded safari and soon to be launched Cottonworld.
Some of the major players in India who made the use of QR codes
Mid Day was one of the first publication in India to use QR codes in its print edition. They used QR codes to provide access to its multimedia content where in a video would play and an option would pop up, to answer a quiz.
Ford Figo also used QR codes in their print advertisement where in by scanning the QR code, the user would be taken to first page where the application by Ford needs to be downloaded. Thereafter, this downloaded application would play an advertisement of the car by using the Internet connection on the devices.
BlackBerry had launched an advertising campaign around QR codes and its functionalities to popularize the BBM concept. This campaign helped in making the brand BBM renowned in India.
CyberMedia a specialty media company with magazines such as PCQuest, DQIndia, Voice & Data etc., started implementing plenty of QR codes in the print editions of its magazines
MTV Stuntmania underground made use of QR codes to promote a popular game show on their channel. Users were able to see videos of the previous episode.
Finally I would like to end up by saying that, the QR technology has been here in India for quite some time now and with more and more companies experimenting with QR codes in all types of marketing, from advertising to packaging, QR codes are here to stay.
References:
Participant
Gurtej Oshan
2 comments:
Simply awesome and of great value to a marketer.
Thank you so much Gurtej for posting this and keep up the good work.
Regards,
Abhishek Sharma
You are welcome. Well its indeed a great tool for a marketer and also a new way of promoting & marketing your product. The best part being you can use it as per your needs. For example like you could place a QR code below a product in a website where you would want to display details,specification, price, etc of it, instead of displaying the data.
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