You may have seen those curious two dimensional barcode looking squares appearing in print magazines, business cards, posters, included in email signatures and indeed on TV commercials.
You may have seen those curious two dimensional barcode looking squares appearing in print magazines, business cards, posters, included in email signatures and indeed on TV commercials and thought to yourself what are these 'space invader' style creations intended to do or are they some form of optical illusion ink-blot psychometric test or indeed subliminal advertising to brainwash consumers by marketers!
QR codes or to give its full title of 'quick response code' are all the rage in the retail sectors and have been hugely popular in Japan for connecting consumers to multimedia information, entertainment and interactive content. So why are they important? Well in the age of the smartphone, the most ubiquitous device for our out-of-home mobile society, the QR code offers companies an engaging way and quick response mechanism to embellish their digital marketing campaigns by the end user merely pointing their smart phone camera at the QR code for a 'scan, click, browse' as the QR can be embedded with a url to a particular product or promotional webpage.
Consumers are bombarded with messages everyday and QR codes when constructed carefully offer a means to appeal to the curiosity of the customer, but enable them to retain more information on the particular marketing offer presented. There are some barriers to the uptake of QR codes in that the phone requires a ' QR reader' to be downloaded to interpret the code, but with more apps now containing pre-installed readers and the i-Phone 5 having a preloaded reader can only increase usage and adoption. For the gambling industry QR codes could present operators the ability to differentiate themselves and get their message across in conjunction with other social media activities given our industry is all about entertainment, but also in the context of sports betting and in-play betting opportunities delivering time critical reminder information in the form of odds on a football match and other betting offers maybe an interesting application of the technology.
