A very big barcode made the cover of the December 09 issue
I’ve been a subscriber to Esquire for a number of years now. Yes I know — Esquire? Articles on what kind of drink to order, car to pine for and suit to buy? And at prices no working man can afford, no less?
That is often true, I’ll admit. But there is also some damn good writing in every issue. Long before General Stanley McChrystal sounded off to Rolling Stone and lost his job, Admiral William Fallon, Commander US Central Command, lost his due to an April 2008 story in Esquire. He was portrayed as not following the Bush-Cheney party line against Iran, and for that he was sacked. You can check it out here — great read.
So anyway, I’m reading Esquire and notice barcodes in some advertisements. One of my clients Neustar has just launched a new blog devoted to the topic of mobile marketing — Mobile’s Next Big Thing. 2 dimensional (2D) barcodes will be key to mobile marketing — after all we now carry phones we personalize with apps, so why can’t mobile marketing be truly personalized? It was time for me to dive in as an end user and check out the experience.
The technology worked perfectly on my iPhone, with high ease of use. The company that supplied the barcodes to Esquire is ScanLife. I simply texted the word “scan” to address 43588, then received a message back with a direct link to a download. Enter in my iTunes password, and I get the app on my phone that turns my camera into a barcode reader. I have already been using an app called ShopSavvy, which turns your phone into a price comparison tool by reading barcodes — extremely handy.
I train my camera on the barcode next to an Etro wool blazer ($1,500?!) and then… the user experience fails. I get taken to a page on Esquire’s site, where I can peruse pictures of Etro’s Winter 2010 fashion show? As a consumer I have taken action, have chosen to interact with Etro’s (and Esquire’s) brand — and this is the benefit? No discount, no immersive experience, not even more specific, detailed information about the specific product? The technology gets an A, the consumer benefit an F.
Clearly the potential is huge for this type of mobile marketing. I’d love to connect Esquire with the mobile experts inside Neustar. As the magazine cover above demonstrates, they clearly believe in this new marketing technology. But they have to re-examine this experiment from the end user perspective, and make sure the consumer is rewarded for deeper engagement.