QR codes… A social media trend for 2011

Last week I met some friends for lunch and while eating my bread I saw some remarkable signs in a magazine. A friend of mine made a picture with her Smartphone of one of the signs and she was redirected to a website. I was amazed!
That same day I started looking for a new subject for my blog and I found a blog describing social media trends for 2011. One of these trends were QR scans. Before, I had never seen these signs and on this day I suddendly saw them twice. This made me curious and I went out for research and learned some interesting thing about QR codes, which I would like to share with you !

So what is a QR (Quick Response) Code?
Wikipedia defines QR codes as followed

a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code), readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera phones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data

How does a QR code look like?
Below you can see two examples of a QR code. As you can notice they look very similar to each other, and yet, they are different from each other.


  

Figure 1 - QR code containing a url to my blog




Figure 2 - QR code containing data about latitude and longitude of the city Tilburg, Netherlands



How does it work?
Nowadays, more and more people have smartphones, which contain QR scanners. So pictures can be made of the QR codes and people will be redirected to the information saved within the code. As mentioned before this can be an URL, text or other data, such as phone numbers and adresses. Figure 3 shows us the concept of scanning QR scans in a very simple way.



Figure 3 - How a QR works

Qr codes are even finding their way into popular TV series. Here an example of QR codes being used in the popular crime TVserie CSI.

                                                               Movie 1 - QR codes in CSI


Are QR scans really the future?
In my opinion they are! They can be put everywhere. On billboards, direct mail, bus stops, on businesscards  and so on on on..

A research on smartphones was conducted by The Future Labaratory and revealed that smartphones have enormous influence on the way people live, think and feel. One of the most important outcomes was that smartphones no longer are associated with geeky people indoors. Instead, smartphones are getting more and more accesible for everyone and are being associated with discovering more and also in a more easily way.QR codes contribute to this in such manner, that it becomes easy to load information onto your mobile by simply making a picture of a QR code.
For marketers QR codes are a way to fill the gap between print and mobile marketingcommunication and to respond to the changing needs of their (potential) customers. Advantages are the ability for marketers to track the response of "clickers" and the response rate. Also ROI (return on investment) can be calculated easily and marketingexpenses can be justified.


Make QR codes yourself!
There are many sites where QR codes can be made. I found this website of Kaywa QR code and thought it was very practical. So go one and find out yourself!

I'm curious to find out where you have seen these QR codes? Do you think they are practical?
Let me know!