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QR codes have received more attention in the US with Google’s Place Pages Project. Here’s a quick explanation of QR codes.

What is a QR code?

• unlike price barcodes which hold up to 20 characters, QR codes hold up to 7,000 characters including website addresses, text, and phone numbers.
• consumers take a picture of the QR code with a code reader downloaded on their mobile phone. (Unfortunately in the US, the software is not on mobile phones by default.)
• turns everyday objects into a physical-world hyperlink.

How can you use QR Codes?

You can attach it to any object to entice interaction and gather metrics. For example, attached to a label, a QR code can link to a video of the winemaker explaining the wine in his own words or a time-elapse video of how they produced the bottle of wine from start to finish. QR codes will be a powerful tool for wine brands to tell a story about the brand.

QR Code Pros:

• redirects to websites with one-click.
• facilitates interaction between consumer and brand by connecting the physical object with a digital presence.
• paperless ticketing for events and airlines. (This will be a dominate implementation sooner than later.)

QR Code Cons:

• phones in the US are not equipped with QR code readers.
• industry must develop standards and support a single QR code format to drive adoption.

View the video to see Google’s Place Pages Project in action.