[pianotech] QR Codes for marketing

[David Boyce]

Joe, to make use of a QR Code you need a cellphone of the "smartphone" 
type that has internet on it. You install an application that is a QR 
Code reader, point the phone at the funny square "maze" as if taking a 
photo of it, and the cellphone decodes it and takes you to whatever 
website it is for.  It's a quick way to direct a customer to your website.

I don't want to go too off-topic, piano-wise, with this QR stuff.  But 
since we all need to consider marketing, it's at least tangentially 
relevant!  I'm interested to know whether QR Codes are becoming as 
widespread in the US as here in the UK.

In the UK, cellphones became very popular very quickly. We as a nation 
were "early adopters" of cellphone technology, achieving much higher 
market saturation than the US very quickly. This had also been the case 
for VHS video machines in the 1980s. For some reason we in the UK liked 
video more quickly than was the case in the US.

With the cellphones, the market quickly got saturated, until there was 
no-one left without one. What were manufacturers to do? Advertising 
quickly skewed (sometimes very subtly and stylishly) away from "get a 
cellphone" towards "if you haven't got the LATEST cellphone you're 
pathetic".  And of course with devlopments in cellphone technology, came 
smartphones with internet access, applications etc. Apple really pushed 
all that forward with the iPhone, and all the other makers raced to 
overtake.

Anyway, I have noticed over about the past year or so, that QR Codes are 
appearing everywhere in the UK. Is it the same in the US? It's a rapidly 
developing bit of technology.  Increasingly, I think all cellphones will 
be smartphones, and I think QR Codes are likely to grow and to remain a 
while.  One problem is that as far as I understand it, there is not one 
universal format that works with all smartphone software operating 
systems.  But that may change.

So I am wondering now, if it would be worth having smart little labels 
printed just with a QR Code, perhaps a nice black on gold, to be 
discreetly stuck on the piano, say on the nameboard of an upright.  And 
it's frustrating that I recently got a batch of business cards printed, 
and turned down the oiption to ahve anything printed on the back!

Best regards,

David.
www.davidboyce.co.uk

> O.K., showing my age, I suspect, but what the hell is a QR Code?? I opened
> the attachment and got a funny looking square with a whole lot of
> squigglies in it. No clue what that is. Looks like a maze for someone's pet
> rat.<G>
> Joe
>
>
>
> Joe Garrett, R.P.T.
> Captain of the Tool Police
> Squares R I



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