Decoding The Smart Tag Code
GET INTERACTIVE: You can scan this bar code using a smart phone to get access to an archive of Digital Diva columns at WBJournal.com.
I was pretty excited for this year’s business expo at the DCU Center.
That’s because I had been to a conference earlier in the week where folks from my industry — regional business journals — were talking about the success they had found using what’s known as QR codes or 2D bar codes.
Even if you haven’t heard the name, you’ve probably seen these bar codes around. They’re popping up everywhere from print advertising, trade shows and restaurants.
The cool thing about these new-fangled bar codes is that you can create them for free through a variety of online services and then anyone with a smartphone and a code reader can scan the code and go to a web address of your choosing.
For the expo, I created a tag using Microsoft’s free service that would link people to a sign-up page for the WBJ Daily Report, our e-mail newsletter. I had visions of hundreds of smartphone-using executives lining up to try out the tag.
Unfortunately, our tag didn’t stir the kind of pandemonium I was hoping for. In fact, no one that I spoke to had used one of these codes before, and no one had the Microsoft reader on their phone that they needed. The two people that humored me enough to try to download the reader on their phone got bored with the slow download and wandered away when I was distracted.
So, overall, my dalliance with QR codes was a giant bust.
Taking A Leap
That’s the thing with new technology. There are so many new gizmos being touted as the next best thing, it’s easy to fall in love with an idea only to see it completely fall flat on its face.
Now I’m not giving up on the idea of QR Codes as a useful marketing tool. But I think their adoption will be relatively slow. First, more people have to convert over to smartphones. While some days it feels like everyone has an iPhone or Droid, the reality is the majority of cell phone users are still using an old-school phone (old-school meaning two years old, of course).
According to The Nielsen Co. (the same folks who bring you TV ratings), 28 percent of Americans own a smartphone, which, as defined by Nielsen, is a phone that has an operating system that mimics a computer. For example, if you can access websites like WBJournal.com with your cellphone, then you probably have a smartphone. If your phone has a cord that attaches to the wall and a rotary dial, then you don’t have a smartphone.
If you believe Nielsen’s stats, and they sound pretty reasonable to me, that means that a vast majority of Americans— nearly two-thirds — do not have smartphones.
Of course, the rate of adoption of smartphones is accelerating, and pretty soon you won’t be able to buy anything but a smartphone at the store. In the meantime, however, what do we do with our smart tags?
And there’s the rub for business owners and marketers. How do you know when to jump on a trend? You don’t want to be too early, like me, standing alone in my trade show booth next to a curious looking bar code. And you don’t want to be too late, showing up to the party when people have already moved on.
I guess it’s a personal choice as to whether you want to risk cutting yourself on the bleeding edge or not. With technology like the 2D bar code, it’s a pretty simple choice. I had to make no investment of money to try out the technology and it took 15 minutes of my personal time. Given that my investment was negligible, I’m not too upset that my return was zero.
In the end, I’d rather err on the side of new given how quickly technology is changing. But that’s a decision every business owner has to make for themselves.
While we wait on greater smartphone adoption, I’m not giving up entirely. We’ve created a special QR Code for this column. Scan it and you’ll get a list of all the previous Digital Diva columns archived on WBJournal.com. If your phone doesn’t already have a QR Code reader on it, download one.
There are a bunch of free readers out there including Verizon BeeTag (BeeTag.com) or Kaywa (reader.kaywa.com). Try it out and maybe you’ll come up with an interesting application of the technology for your business. If you do come up with a brilliant idea, let me know so I can share it with the WBJ's readers.
Got news for the Digital Diva column? E-mail Christina H. Davis at cdavis@wbjournal.com.
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