Like a parent with children on opposing basketball teams I have sat in marketing department meetings and listened to internet marketers and traditional marketing experts banter back and forth about how the customer was won.
 
  In internet marketing it is relatively easy to track a campaign’s effectiveness -click a button and you know which landing page your customer came from, put a tracking code in your email marketing and measure the response, have customers text a certain response,-your mobile marketing works, etc. However campaign specific ROI has always been difficult to measure in print and traditional mediums. Which print ad worked? Did they like this media piece? Was it the campaign we launched this month or last month that worked? How do you quantify how many visited the website through the suggestion of a print medium? The convergence (buzzword bingo) of integration of print and online marketing are key factors in the success of your marketing team, but how does a team go about doing that?
 
A technology that has been on the world stage since 1994 is the answer. 
 

QR Codes are coming to a town near you!!
 
The quick response codes, better known as QR codes, are already huge in Japan and in the European market. (Ergo my reference to the Japanese cultural infusion of the 80’s in the title ) These QR codes are exploding in popularity in the American marketplace. They are in magazines, business cards, newspapers, advertising flyers, posters, even buildings, and tattoos. (taking internet dating to a whole new level). The act of linking real world objects to the web is called hardlinking or real world hyperlinking. 
 
 Here’s how it works. You take a picture with your QR reader enabled mobile device. This software is usually free or relatively inexpensive to download. The code directs the phone’s web browser to your web site, a landing page, or to an affiliate. (I clicked on a movie poster QR code and it took me a portal where I could buy the ticket online.) This quick and convenient way for your customer to go from print media to the web also allows the traditional marketer a way to track and measure the ROI of various campaigns.

Since David an I agree that getting a QR code Tattoo for Brand Advance may be a little much I will leave you with this link to the weather channel utilizing Android and QR codes.

Robert Urban