Comments on: Ralph Lauren wants QR codes to be mainstream

By: dean collins

dean collins — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:52:52 +0000

Scanning software doesn’t have to be difficult to use – if you have an appropriate model handset try Quickmark – it’s what I use after trying about 2 or 3 other software applications.

Cheers,
Dean

By: olivier PEYRE

olivier PEYRE — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 05:32:22 +0000

Totally agreed, potential is huge, execution still needs to be defined. Especially during adoption phase. It’s tricky since you need consumers to adopt the technology and download the software, so the early adopters should be rewarded!

By: Michael Thomson

Michael Thomson — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 05:21:59 +0000

I think in RL case, this was poorly done as I am pretty confident the RL homepage on their mobile site was the destination, but you just never knew it.

In terms of potential for QR-Codes, think how else these can work e.g. reading a newspaper, see a topic about the war highlighting video footage, QR-Code next to piece, scan QR-Code, visit website and view video.

This would truely bring many aspects of offline… online via mobile.

As you highlighted, scanning software is annoying.

By: Mike Street

Mike Street — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:49:42 +0000

Point taken! I’m a marker for Jim Beam and we use 2D codes in our campaign for http://www.thestuffinside.com. We tried to make the experience as easy as possible. But the iPhone is a different animal and since the web browser is so good they should have pointed to a regular sized html site instead of a mobile site.

If you visit m.thestuffinside.com on your web browsers you’ll see that it is a small site and create for mobile devices where the screen is 320×240. The iPhone can pretty much support a regular site that doesn’t have flash built into it.

By: dean collins

dean collins — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:04:50 +0000

I totally agree there were some initial poor ‘UI’ decisions being made on the Ralph Lauren campaign.

BTW have you seen how they implemented storefront QR codes for their New York Rugy brand store http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/ralph-lauren-physical-storefront-qr.html

Having said this QR codes are a huge boon to PWC. Check out http://www.Cognation.net/QR for some ideas on how else to implement QR codes.

Regards,
Dean Collins
http://www.Cognation.net

By: LP Riel

LP Riel — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:24:18 +0000

That’s crazy!

Vespa’s campaign in Toronto was better I think: http://www.haroeverybody.com/vespa-qr/

I started playing around with QR Codes a month ago and it’s really not ready for “big advertising campaigns”. There’s no websites officialy explaining what are QR codes, how to read them and how to make them. You have to spend hours on google. The best website I found is http://reader.kaywa.com/ but there is no support for iphones. For iphones, like you said there are four readers and they’re all different. Some work, some don’t. Some support QR codes others don’t. Lighting as to be perfect and since the apps can’t directly access the iphone’s camera, it takes forever to read a QR code. For other smatphones, it’s quite easy to read them. But getting the people to download the reader that’s right for their phone is complicated. There’s more than 10 readers supporting different phones and carriers on the web.

I think a big company (Google, Apple, etc..) needs to take a look at that problem and develop something that would work for everybody.