I got my email from OutputLinks this morning. Then followed the links to Joe Barber's post at the QR blog and found the following. My only quibble is with "increased response rates are a CMO’s best friend."
Actually actionable information is what helps CMOs not get fired every 18 months. Response rates are just a snapshot of activity. It's similar to the way that a high stakes test is only a snapshot of a learning process. But real life is not a snapshot. It's a movie.
Actionable information is needed for a sustainable brand over the long term. Actionable intelligence helps one figure out what to do next. Every CMO needs to know what to do next. The under appreciated power of both QRPurlZ and human readable QRs in the form of TinyPurls is as a perfect tool for TransInfo. TransInfo can generate actionable intelligence.
High School education at the bottom of the pyramid
For Print, education and health are the under appreciated high value markets for the next couple of years. As a brand becomes a trusted conversation, the lessons earned in marketing can be applied in education.
Consider reinvented textbooks that lets the teacher know if and when a student clicked on a website, looked at a video and then created their response on a wiki, blog or at twitter.
The teacher/student user experience
Print out a "clickable" A4 at the MFP.
Hand out it out to the class.
"Please click on the link and watch the video on your smartphone or computer.
Write your questions or comments in your notebook or tweet them to the class."
Time and date stamped real time information exchange data created with no investment of teacher time. The teacher can monitor when time permits. It can be printed out to share with moma on open school night. If the questions and comments lead to an online stored conversation, it becomes a measure of learning that supplements the snapshot produced by standardized tests.
The real challenge in education is to change behavior. "Clickable" print is a new metric to monitor the behavior of information exchange. Information exchange is the observable behavior of learning. As the data emitted can be searched and analyzed, it will be possible to see what works and what doesn't with enough time to eliminate what doesn't.
QR Codes Are a Purls Best Friend:
We recently introduced a new brand called QRPurlZ which encode PURLS (personalized URLs) into a CodeZ QR. I am often asked, "Will QRPurlZ replace PURLs?" The answer is a resounding NO!
In fact QRPurlZ only serve to enhance the value PURLs bring campaigns and the continued deployment of PURLs will increase the demand for CodeZ QR.
Why do I say this?
PURLs allow the marketer to engage the customer in a one on one dialogue. Through this dialogue the marketer learns more about that customer which aids in even more relevant future communications.
The problem with PURLs has been that they require the recipient to be near an internet connected computer to fat-finger key a long character string.
QRPurlZ eliminate the cumbersome keying required by PURLS and can even be read by most cell phones. The cell phone - often called today's computer - is always on, always ready and always available which creates a perfect device to read QRPurlZ when the recipient is at their peak stage of interest. No more typing or waiting to get to the computer.
With QRPurlZ marketers can now encode their PURLS into a CodeZ QR.
Now a user can simply scan the code with their mobile phone or web cam and they are instantly connected to their personalized landing page.
So CodeZ QR really is a PURLs best friend by helping lower the barriers to immediate recipient response to dramatically increase campaign response rates.
And, increased response rates are a CMO’s best friend.
Posts
March 25th, 2009 at 8:34 pm edit
Michael,
See: http://www.pacprint.com.au/
Printernet is one of the themes of this upcoming show, although more in a marketing sense than the apps you describe.
I am one who believes that the contextualisation - on both personal and interest group levels - of information in a bound printed product is set to be one of the next big things. If that’s Printernet then yes, it’s useful.
March 26th, 2009 at 4:36 am edit
Andy-
And I thought I coined the term. lol. Just goes to show that there are no new ideas, just different implementations in different places! If someone in Australia thought it was a good word, and I thought it was a good word here in New York. It might actually be a good word.
At any rate, my sense is that if the term is used not merely for marketing, but as a guide for strategy it works. It means that local printers become eager to make connections, instead of trying to go it alone. It means that the vendors see that they are part of much greater media ecosystem that implies they can’t go it alone.
With the coming to market of mass customization technology, it means the beginning of the end of one size fits all Print. The under appreciated opportunity is the ability of Print to communicate with groups of people, with micro versioning, instead of focusing on 1 to 1 in the service of direct mail on steroids.
I’m seeing:
Relevant content printed and distributed by local PSP’s as bi monthly “stay in front of the customer” newsletter? newspaper? poster? And every once in a while a book?
It could be:
Corporate communication to stockholders directly that by passes the “busyness press.”. Or the latest print stories from Australia, India or Europe. Or industry specific content - marketing? advertising? education? etc etc
Or the good news about people on the ground with innovative solutions, as one finds in the Christian Science Monitor.
http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/