Blog Post: Engineering Around A Barrier

I am encouraged by blog posts like this by Thomas Husson. Instead of seeing a technology like QR Codes as “dead”, companies like mobiLead solutions are engineering around the problem.

While I don’t think this is the only barrier, QR Codes are kind of an eye sore and difficult to weave into attractive marketing materials. What if, instead of sticking one in the bottom of a print ad, the logo had the target integrated?

That, and mobile devices having scanners fully integrated into the operating software, could give the technology a bump in the right direction.

It’s solutions like this that could benefit fringe breakthrough ideas like QR Codes, NFC chips and RFID tags. Identify the barrier and engineer around it.

Blog Post: Engineering Around A Barrier

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Blog Post: Are QR Codes Dead Already?

We are asking this very question at my company this week after I read this article from Ad Age. The author lays out a scenario where mobile users prefer mobile apps to websites, and native apps are already past the need for a QR tag to reference a piece of Internet data. Of course, this brings up the point I have made previously regarding the need for an app in your mobile strategy.

QR Codes were once attached to just about everything — in some forms of media, they still are. Are we really saying this helpful piece of technology is already dead?

This has been an issue I have been investing some time this week. In some industries where mobile apps aren’t a viable part of a strategy, these codes can still help drive customers to pieces of inventory easier.

The rebuttal mentioned is augmented reality, which I think is hilarious  Mobile devices aren’t even close to ready to handle that kind of traffic in large volume. In retail businesses where inventory is moved around the property regularly (clothing, automobiles and grocery stores for example), this is just not logistically possible. 

Invisible ink sounds interesting, although the technology to print it is probably just as behind the curve as augmented-reality tagging. There is already affordable, and sometimes free, software to put QR Codes in business owner’s hands.

Be careful when you read doomsday articles such as this. I love the work being published in Ad Age, and agree with a lot of the points B.L. Ochman offers on QR technology. Maybe she needs to go after her editor for that headline.

Blog Post: Are QR Codes Dead Already?

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