Do’s and Don’ts of QR Codes

QR codes, a concept used in Japan for years, is just now catching on in the US. To the unsuspecting eye they are merely black and white squares that look like some kind of printing mark or error. Meanwhile, the tech-savvy consumer holds up their cell phone to scan it in anticipation of new content. QR codes can be beneficial. If they are used correctly, they cut through consumers’ short attention spans and add layering and depth to one-dimensional advertisements. However, use them incorrectly and you run the risk of damaging your brand, possibly with permanent consequences. Like a new type of social media, the use of QR codes should not be taken lightly. Today’s advances in technology mean that messages travel farther and faster than ever before. Thus it is important that the messages sent out are sent correctly and are positively received by consumers. The following is a list of do’s and don’ts to refer to when considering the use of QR codes.

Do use them to provide something extra – Consumers are expecting a special website with behind-the-scenes looks and exclusive content. In other words, something they would not see anywhere else and something that adds to their experience of your brand.

Don’t use them as a replacement for your message - The easiest way to confuse consumers is by not communicating or miscommunication. There should be enough other content surrounding its usage, and a clear message, that the QR code remains a bonus. It should not be the only thing in your ad. If it is then consumers lose sight of who you are as a brand. Your brand is not a QR code, it is much more than that.

Do use them on display signs within stores – More and more consumers use smartphones to purchase products. I see it as a missed opportunity if they are not present on store product display signs. There is not enough space on a sign to display all of the information a consumer needs to know. Any details on a display sign are just an attempt at best. A QR code is a great way to direct consumers to product reviews and more information.

Don’t use them as a cop-out for lack of creativity – This goes hand in hand with the rule to not use them as a replacement for your message. QR codes are not something you just throw in because you can’t think of anything better to use in your ad.

Do get creative with their usage – As the industry becomes saturated with QR codes it is important that yours stand out. Put a creative pattern inside or around them, but make sure the code is still scannable, and you have something that catches people’s attention. Macy’s is an example, as they took the QR code and embedded it within their trademark red star on storefront windows http://bit.ly/eLhjC9. Also use them in unconventional ways or placements. An example would be to put them on press releases and have the landing page be an interactive media kit. 

Don’t use QR’s to send consumers to your website – Directing consumers to your website with a QR code is a cop-out and unimaginative. If you need to let consumers know about your website, include it in the ad. The QR code is for extra content and your website is not extra content. It is a standard extension of your brand. 

Don’t overuse them – Repetition can be a good thing, but oversaturation is not. If you use QR codes too often, or in ways that are too predictable, they could lose their effectiveness.

Do use them effectively - Be picky about what you use them for and how you use them. To be anything but picky is a disservice to you and your consumers.

In short, QR codes are: Innovative? Check. Important? Check. Thought-provoking? Check. The ways in which they can be incorporated and utilized are potentially endless. Use them in ways that outshine your competition while adding to your brand? Priceless.

Cause-Related Marketing:Walking the Line

The decision to launch a cause-related marketing campaign is one that can be tricky. Approach it in the wrong way and you come off looking like a profiteer instead of a supporter. Jump in too late, and you become a follower instead of an innovator. How frequently you tie yourself to a cause also has bearing on your perception. Too infrequently and people forget, too frequently and people may forget you and what you are about. With the recent tragedy in Japan, as with any world tragedy, cause-related marketing once again springs up abundantly. Everyone wants to be associated. According to the Wall Street Journal http://on.wsj.com/e5pNex Lady Gaga has a prayer bracelet and CashForGold.com is donating 10% of its profits, while SushiSamba is donating all proceeds of its $12 sushi rolls to the relief efforts. In other words it runs the gamut. It is nice that companies and celebrities spring into action when disaster strikes, but cause-related marketing knows no season. My point being that it is better to align yourself with a cause on an ongoing basis rather than just whenever the need strikes. Springing into action is not a bad thing, in fact it is very important. However, rather than jumping from cause to cause, it strengthens your brand when your customers can associate you with a consistent cause. For example, I shop at Albertson’s. During the month of March, around St. Patrick’s Day, you can always support the Muscular Dystrophy Association by making a $1 donation at the register and having it displayed on a shamrock. This is this type of association you want to create and then communicate.

Deals for Facebook Places is a relatively new way to share these associations with your customers http://bit.ly/hzEzEl. There are four types of deals, one of them being charity deals. Instead of enticing customers with discounts alone, why not reward them for indirectly supporting your cause by supporting your business? This is what is known as a win-win situation. One does not overshadow the other, you are known and known in relation to your cause without it being the sole thing they know about and associate with you. The key to any effective cause-related marketing campaign is consistency and communication. Very alliterative I know, but it is the truth. Consistency is obviously important for the reasons I mention above and communication is too, as Bing found out when they tied themselves to the recent Japan earthquake and tsunami tragedy. Bing posted a message on Twitter offering to donate $1 to the relief efforts every time someone passed their message along. Their backlash came when customers accused them of exploiting the situation as a marketing opportunity instead of simply aligning themselves with an opportunity to give back. The last thing any business wants to do is misrepresent themselves, and that is where the right approach through communication becomes a key factor. It is important to focus on the cause in relation to your company and to not give them the chance to draw conclusions that you have any motives other than that. Making it look like it is more of a take than a give situation, whether intentionally or not, is a grave disservice to your brand and your company.  Thus consistency and communication are the basis and key components of an effective cause-related marketing campaign, and are an important lesson to take away and utilize. Misuse them and they create enemies, but use them judiciously and they can create allies that last a lifetime.

The Social Media Evolution of News

This week I read some interesting highlights from the SXSW interactive conferences that recently took place in Austin, Texas. One of the highlights was an emerging concept brought up by Trei Brundrett, SB Nation’s vice president of product and technology, called a ’story stream’ http://bit.ly/gejXWw. Viewing the practice of updating a post at the bottom of the page and having users scroll down as inconvenient, SB Nation sought an alternative. As a result they came up with the ’story stream’ technology, allowing journalists to update a post anywhere within a story and use design elements to direct the reader to the latest development. A great concept for breaking and developing stories, but what about after the fact? Clay Shirky’s opening day session was all about how “social media helps synchronize, coordinate, document social change” http://bit.ly/hMcc61.  He focused on how social media has been very influential in recent revolutions. The article from the above link even utilizes Twitter highlights in a ‘Storify’ narrative to condense his session into chronological highlights. Storify is a way for journalists to pull in Facebook and Twitter comments, online video and more into a narrative storyline and chronology that contains links to source material http://bit.ly/gBNVbU. The ‘story stream’ and ‘Storify’ concepts attempt to do what social media sites fail to do at the moment, and that is group together comments into categories and archive stories. If social media is really going to “document social change,” as Clay Shirky states, then it needs to develop a set of tools that group and archive stories so they can be accessed after the fact and not just as they are breaking and developing.

The pitfall of social media for news is that relevant story comments are not grouped together in a chronological order to present the entire story. Additionally, there is no archive system and only the most recent Tweets and status updates are accessible. After a short amount of time they disappear on a Facebook user’s main feed and a Twitter source’s main feed. My thoughts are that Twitter and Facebook should join with Storify, and that Storify should automatically organize Facebook and Twitter comments into stories. There could easily be a tab that allows you to switch from the typical feed to the Storify feed. Within the Storify format there would be categories that would make documenting and accessing news and stories of social change a lot easier. Gone would be the days of endless scrolling and at your fingertips would be an easier way to access and digest news. Outside of that there should really also be a print archive. Someone could make a lot of money producing a whole series of books titled “A Social Media History of (fill in the blank).” In comparison with print in documenting news, a grouping and archiving system is the only thing that social media lacks. As social media develops, I think there is a real need for this. Researchers, students and those who just happen to be searching for a specific topic within the social media realm could really benefit from the grouping and archiving  of social media. This could be the crux of the social media evolution, the stepping stone that would make it competitive with blogs and print in grouping and archiving news. It is a concept that I have not seen addressed, and one that I hope will be in the near future.

Social Media Sells When Originality Sells

Social media advertising is touted as being the game changer, the difference between becoming a household name or remaining another face in the crowd. Traditional advertising, print and TV, are often looked down upon in this age of social media. I do not advocate one over the other, as both traditional and new media are essential. In fact it is not about the method, or communication channel, when it comes to sales. Social media advertising may be a lot more prevalent than traditional advertising today, but it does not guarantee that a message will be well received. For any kind of advertising to be effective the message has to be persuasive. Think about a time when two different people told you about the same concept or idea. One of them was likely more persuasive than the other and most likely it had to do with their choice of words and their approach. That can be the difference between alienating and capturing a customer. In other words, it all comes down to creativity and originality. I am not talking about the originality demonstrated by Chrysler’s Twitter F-bomb. That was an inappropriate and offensive kind of originality that did not do anyone any favors. The kind of creativity and originality I am referring to involves a unique approach that entices customers. Search marketing agency Covario recently did a study on the relationship between money spent on advertising, digital vs. traditional, and buzz created http://bit.ly/hy1tkl.

Using a software reporting platform called Social Media Insight, he found a direct correlation between the amount spent on digital advertising and the amount a company is discussed on Twitter. However, that is how often they are mentioned positively or negatively. No direct correlation between the amount spent on advertising, digital or traditional, and resulting brand sentiment was found. This highlights the importance of social media advertising as an integral addition to any brand campaign strategy, but more so than that it indicates that the message is the most important aspect. It does not matter how much money you spend on digital advertising, if your message does not resonate then your brand will not sell. An example is Kleenex’s recent “Softness Worth Sharing” campaign, allowing customers to send free samples of Kleenex to friends and family through Kleenex.com and sign ups at retail locations http://bit.ly/fITiZd. 1 million consumers participated. While advertising was distributed through TV, print, digital and social media advertising, TV and digital ads seemed to produce the most activity. The reason they produced the most activity was likely a factor of their message being more relevant. Advertising methods may come and go but the answer remains the same, the channel is not effective if the message is not effective. In a way it is a back to basics approach, but you cannot underestimate the value of this fundamental principle. You do not have anything if you do not have an effective message.

Targeted News Enters A New Dimension

There are so many ways to get news now, from TV, online, mobile, iPad, Facebook, Twitter…the list goes on. News is so accessible and so abundant now that it becomes harder to effectively capture an audience. It is information overload and people flit from one news source to another. Local news used to be considered targeted news, but with the industry in flux that has all changed. Hyper-targeted news sources are emerging to draw in their audience by making news simplified, interactive and more relatable. With more people deviating from mainstream media, the emergence of these news sources reflects the need to keep people engaged with the news and more frequently engaged with the news. One of these hyper-targeted examples is aimed at Generation Y, also known as the 21-35 age group, and takes a more simplified approach that they call OneMinuteNews http://bit.ly/fQHhFp. Like the name suggests, OneMinuteNews offers one minute news bites on-demand to web and mobile users. Its content covers a variety of topics, from lifestyle to technology and everything in between. As attention spans grow increasingly limited, OneMinuteNews seems like an effective way to capture interest and an audience who is on the move and needs news to be wherever they are and convenient to the increasing demands on their time. Another interesting aspect is the person who developed it, Douglas J. Greenlaw. After holding senior positions at MTV and Viacom, networks which have a history of developing news formats for younger demographics (MTV News and Nick News with Linda Ellerbee), who better to pitch OneMinuteNews to Generation Y? Another example seeks to make news more engaging by allowing any organization to post hyper-local news assignments that users can search, by location, as eyewitness accounts break and as news unfolds.

Known as Tackable this mobile-oriented news source, which is still in beta, envisions offering a lot of opportunities to media as well as ordinary people http://bit.ly/g0qfzM. Reporters could more easily find breaking news simply by pulling the map over to their location. Meanwhile, ordinary people would be given a voice as Tackable entices them to contribute their first-hand accounts of breaking news. It also shows promise for advertising and tracking events that are happening where you are, at your destination or in an area of interest. Since Tackable has so many applications, and gets people involved with news, it could be an interesting one to watch when it arrives. The third example, News360, serves up a more relatable news offering by algorithmically delivering, using AI technology, news stories that are the newest and the most credible http://bit.ly/dDXmrI. News360 is an attempt to cut through the clutter and filter out news that is the most interesting to you. Mathew Ingram notes that so far Facebook and Twitter have been the best ways to get recommended content when it comes to news, and that anyone who seeks to top them is going to have to use both of them to do it. While News360 is not perfect by any means, who’s to say that Facebook and Twitter are? I believe this is an area that is still in development. It is very hard to accurately tune into what people want to read at a certain time and in a certain mood, and if they happen to be looking for something different it does not work when you have a program suggesting things akin to what you usually search for and read. Perhaps that is why I think the first two hold more relevance, because they allow control to remain in the hands of the recipients. After all, who better to know what news you want to see than yourself? Much like a search engine serves up the most relevant sources to our queries, each of these hyper-targeted news sources allows us to cut through massive amounts of news and access only those tidbits that we deem interesting. Although still in development, each of these brings us one step closer to a news on-demand format that efficiently serves and satisfies the news appetite of every individual. With varying interests and demands, that will be a feat in itself. One could say these new targeted news sources put us on the precipice of a new dimension for the news industry. We live in interesting times, and these hyper-targeted news sources make sure that everyone continues to engage with and keep up with them.