The sixties meet modern times as a power company uses QR codes in search of new souls.

 'Hallo Hippie' Flower Power QR Code poster in bus stops around Eindhoven.

The advert offers four months of free 'eco' or 'green' energy if you switch to this power vendor. The energy market is a flux in the Netherlands at present and all the energy providers are trying to win new souls they can sell their power too.  As everything CO² friendly is in these days, this is a big push for power vendors. Whats new here is the use of QR codes. In this particular case a well done campaign.

Benefits for the vendor: A hot prospects contact information.
Benefits for scanning the QR code: Besides 4 months free power, you also receive a solar garden light.

All of this with one simple QR code and two mobile friendly easy to use web based mobile pages. Another good example of how to use QR codes for active marketing purposes.

Cross-media, social media and product promotion meet via QR codes on food product packaging.

QR codes on food products, it's not new, so why feature this one....Because it's well done!

'Lay's' a Dutch chips or crisps manufacturer is using QR codes on their product packaging for promotional purposes. The way they go about it is very clever and many a marketer can learn from this good example that covers all the needed bases required to make a potentially great and successful marketing campaign.

The purpose for the producer: Get as many social media contacts as possible.
The purpose for the consumer: Win free tickets to musical events for four people.
The method: A mobile friendly, easy to navigate, simple and effective website to achieve the goal.

Consumers must link to the manufacturer via a social media channel to be able to participate in the competition. This is a very clever and effective way to reach your consumers by getting them to link to your social media channels. In exchange for this link they offer 'daily prizes' of free tickets to several musical events in the Netherlands that are held during the summer months. This is a great initiative to motivate the younger generation to get connected and potentially go to concerts of their choice for free.

Using QR codes to drive consumers to social media channels with the potential reward of winning tickets to musical events. A smart implementation of QR codes where the benefits are to the advantage of the campaign owner.

'Buzcard' the smart business card for a new generation

Smart business cards from Buzcard

Buzcard is a professional business card with contact QR code production platform that offer direct and smart QR codes for use on business cards. You can select a business card from a pre-designed library and modify the contents to suit, or upload you own design as a PDF file and the system will generate the contact information QR code and place it on the back of the card for you.

1. Choose your design from a library of business cards, or upload your own
2. Choose between a direct contact QR code or a managed smart QR code.

A simple, easy and effective platform for everyone to have access to get the benefits of smart business cards at very competitive prices.

For more information on the Buzcard platform and what it can do for you and your organization, contact Publimation or QR4.

 Buzcards, smart business cards for a new generation.

Cross-media contact exchange for a new generation

Publimation, a French company specializing in data driven publishing and communications platforms has combined the old world of business cards with the new generation of digital contact information services in a service called Forever Card.

Best of both worlds

Combining traditional business cards with modern digital systems does have its advantages. The platform is called 'Forever Card' meaning that your contact information is always up-to-date and correct. The system uses the popular 'Flashcode' 2D datamatrix code as well as QR codes.

How does it work

Forever Card allows you to put a QR or Flashcode on your business card. Behind this code is a secure personal portal that provides two functions.

The first allows you to access your contact information and make changes as these happen, like a new social media link, a change of address or telephone number.

The second is a service built for mobile devices to display the contact information you have made available. But it also does a lot more.

• Direct calling by simply clicking on the telephone number.
• Direct profile linking to all your favorite social media services with a single click.
• Get notification if any information is changed so people that scanned your code can update their contact lists.
• Provide links to your web sites and web services

So even if the business card the QR code is printed on is not longer current, by scanning the QR code they are immediately informed of your current information and can instantly get in contact you.

This is another great example of how QR codes can be used to offer real value added services.

The company behind the Forever Card is Publimation and they can be contacted at:

Publimation France
20, Rue Michodière
75002 Paris
France
Tel. : +33 (0)1 56 56 76 50
Fax. : +33 (0)1 58 45 15 80

Where was that QR code scanned?

Knowing when and where a QR code is scanned can be valuable information for marketing professionals. Because QR codes are mostly scanned by mobile and smartphones of which most have GPS (Global Positioning System) on board, It could be interacting to request this geographic location information from the device that scanned the code to determine the location and time the scan was made.

Putting Geolocation of a QR code scan to the test

Below are two QR codes, one for the iPhone/iPad(click on it) and the other for Android mobile devices. Scan the code to see how it determines your geographic position.

The result on an Samsung Android system	The results from an iPhone

 How geo-location works

The iPhone geolocator uses new HTML5 features to ask for the co-ordinates. Unfortunately Android (froyo) in combination with the Samsung Galaxy S's standard browser does not seem to support this, so here we went back to Google Gears which did the trick, but the accuracy leaves a lot to be desired.

The technology used in the two test cases above is openly and freely available on the Internet, so if you have QR codes in newspapers, magazines or on materials that move around a lot and you want insight into where these QR codes are being scanned. These systems may be helpful in providing you with the geographic information you need. If you want to integrate geolocation with your QR codes and need assistance, please contact us.