Think Outside The Box

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday July 5, 2008

Maria Nguyen

A new type of barcode opens up a world of opportunity on your mobile phone. By Maria Nguyen.

Imagine you're waiting at the bus stop. It's cold and the bus is late. Again.

A poster at the bus shelter for the latest blockbuster movie catches your eye, especially what looks like a small, square black-and-white barcode.

You grab your mobile phone and scan the code with your phone's camera. This action instantly connects your mobile to a website where you can watch the movie trailer and video interviews with the film's stars and find out where and when the film is showing that weekend.

You're then prompted to sign up for a two-for-one voucher, which can be sent to your handset and redeemed at the cinema. The bus has finally arrived. Quickly, you hop on and catch up on reading today's paper.

There's an ad for a special package deal to Bora Bora in the travel section, and when you see a similar black-and-white square barcode alongside the photo of an exquisite beach, you scan it with your phone's camera.

This time, the square barcode connects your mobile to a website that features a video tour of the Bora Bora resort, information on various package holidays and contact details for the travel centre.

You're asked to choose between saving the travel agent's phone number onto your mobile or be connected to a sales consultant to discuss trip options.

A mobile reality

By now, many of you may be thinking these are nothing but pie-in-the-sky scenarios, dreamt by fanciful marketers who have, themselves, been bored witless waiting for too many late buses. These scenarios and many more like them, however, are already the daily realities for most of the 90 million-plus mobile phone users in Japan, a mobile phone-mad society where consumers and advertisers (from corporations to the local store) have come to embrace these barcodes as part of everyday life. They're a simple, convenient way to share and store information on mobile phones.

Called QR codes (short for quick response codes), these two-dimensional square barcodes are set to become a familiar site in Australia, following Telstra's decision to sink substantial investment dollars into the technology.

In partnership with its business divisions BigPond, WhereIs, Sensis, City Search and Foxtel, as well as media (including this newspaper's publisher, Fairfax) and major entertainment and sporting brands, Telstra will deliver information and services, including news, weather, sport, music and videos.

More importantly, to fast-track the technology, Telstra is again following in Japan's footsteps by developing mobile phones that come standard with QR code readers, a huge investment that involves partnering with handset manufacturers.

Tim Copper, Telstra's executive director of consumer and channels, says the carrier expects 1 million handsets to be QR code-reader enabled by the end of the year. Copper says many Telstra advertisements will feature QR codes - called Telstra Mobile Codes - with the initial focus on drumming up interest in the barcodes and what they can do.

"We've got a range of content and we're doing a range of things and promotions to encourage people to use codes and get excited about what codes can do for them," Copper explains.

"We want to capture the customer's imagination ... we're looking for customers to have those water cooler conversations, those restaurant and bar conversations, about what these codes are. We want them to be curious and to try it out and experience what they can get through QR codes," he says.

The Telstra Mobile Codes are already appearing on Telstra-related advertising material including joint promotions with Sony Ericsson, Sony Australia and dance music group Sneaky Sound System.

Capturing youth

Industry experts say Telstra is introducing QR codes to attract a younger audience. The telco already dominates the business sector and older demographics, but youth is still an elusive, untapped market for a telco that is trying to work on developing a "cooler" image.

"Telstra dominates the market here but it's mainly an older customer base and business customers," says Antony McGregor Dey, the chief executive of QM Codes, a QR code marketing specialist.

He says QR codes are a platform for Telstra to earn more money from the content it already owns across BigPond, Sensis, CitySearch and Foxtel. It will also generate more income from data-usage charges levied on customers accessing the content through the $1billion high-speed Next G mobile broadband network.

Industry observers also agree the timing and approach are right - as Australians are increasingly developing an appetite for multimedia content on their mobiles.

Experts say the fact that, like NTT DoCoMo in Japan, Australia's largest telco is driving the adoption of QR codes is a positive. And Telstra's decision to preload many handsets with a reader is also seen as a smart move to help overcome any apathy consumers may feel towards manually downloading the software.

"There will be some general consumer apathy," McGregor Dey says. "It's about giving them that reason to bother and making it easier for them ... [and in terms of Telstra's investment] the most expensive bit is shipping the handsets and pre-installing the software readers. But I think it's a bloody good thing and the industry here will kick off over the next two to three years."

The power of the barcode

The big advantage of QR code technology is its simplicity. It acts like a fuss-free short cut that quickly and easily links, for example, a static ad in a magazine, an outdoor poster or a newspaper classified to a website or other media content.

Instead of manually opening your mobile's web browser, typing the web address and surfing for content using the small keypads of your phone, the QR code, once recognised by the reader program, automatically opens the web browser on your mobile and activates the information embedded in the code.

While QR code trials are taking place worldwide, according to Telstra, Australia is the first country, outside of QR code leaders Japan, to develop, champion and launch preloaded handsets on a mass scale.

The preloaded Nokia 6120 mobile is already available in Australia, while the Sony Ericsson W760i and Samsung U900T handsets will be sold, installed with Telstra's code readers, over the next week.

All new-model Next G mobile phones will be preloaded with the Telstra Code Reader, which is similar to the i-nigma reader that is standard in more than

90 per cent of mobiles in Japan.

Telstra says its existing 3G and Next G customers will, in the coming weeks, be able to download reader software to access QR codes that will offer free promotional and paid content and services, across Telstra's business divisions and marketing partners.

In addition to company QR codes, anyone can create their own QR code online, embedded with their personal details and then printed, for example, onto business cards or clothing.

In Japan, people wear T-shirts printed with their own code so friends and passers-by can scan and instantly upload their details, such as Facebook sites, to a mobile handset.

Copper and QR code specialists agree that another key challenge to getting QR codes off the ground is teaching consumers to recognise the barcode as shorthand for "reward".

"We're trying to educate consumers that the code means they will get a benefit by scanning it," Copper adds.

"Customers are fickle. These days they will try something once, maybe twice. So the first experience needs to be so good that they will come back.

"Our content will have a strong push for the youth market to use it as part of social networking, and go all the way through to advertisers picking this up and using this as a whole new way to bring physical media to life."

Adam Dunne, sales and marketing director of Aura Interactive, a Sydney mobile marketing agency working with telcos and big brands such as LG, Ford and Virgin Mobile, describes QR codes as "physical world connectors".

"When you create a piece of print advertising for example, it's fixed, but obviously, once you can click through to, say, multimedia content on your mobile via the QR code, it makes that once-static ad dynamic and interactive."

McGregor Dey, from QM Codes, even refers to the black-and-white square code as a "brand in its own right".

"Nothing in the market looks like it and, once you know how it works, it really will be like a call to action," he says.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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