After reading this post yesterday, we decided it deserved prominent placement on our beloved blog. With Jacob Tyler now offering QR Codes as part of our social media strategy here’s an awesome post by Scott Cappel, President of Sorrento Mesa Printing. As time passes and QR codes become more mainstream, they really will transform the way we interact with the world while we are actually in it. In all honestly, I had a hard time with the concept but in reading this post, among others, they really do provide the most direct line of communication between you and everything around you, as opposed to going home and looking up what you remember from your day when you get there. Without further chatter, enjoy the post….

QR or Quick Response codes enable print media and web mobile media to work together. With any smartphone (iPhone, Blackberry, Droid etc.) enabled with a QR Reader app (free software that can be downloaded) you can click a picture of the QR code and it will launch your smartphone’s browser and take you to whatever URL is embedded within the code.

QR codes were invented in 1994 by the Japanese corporation Denso Wave. Originally designed to track parts in vehicle production they have now become an open source ISO standard free for the world to use. Because of its 2 dimensional design it is capable of encoding up to 7,089 characters. This is far more data than a typical one dimensional bar code such as the standard UPC symbol. A QR code can therefore encode any web address no matter the length of the URL.

Here are a few examples of how QR codes can be used in your print media:

• A Realtor can place a QR code on the printed information sheet outside of a home for sale. A prospective buyer can snap a picture of the QR code which contains a URL taking the user to a YouTube video featuring a virtual tour of the home.
• At a scientific conference poster session, a scientist could place a QR code on their poster containing a URL leading directly to a PDF of the poster so as colleagues reviewed the poster’s content they could also save a PDF to their phone and email it to colleagues not in attendance.
• An online retailer can send out postcards in a direct marketing campaign that would include a QR code containing a URL to an interior page on their site containing a discount or a promotion only available via the QR code. This would drive mobile customers to the promotion with the additional benefit of allowing measurement of the effectiveness of the postcard campaign.
• A manufacturer of equipment could use QR codes in their instruction manuals that would have direct links to their website or YouTube highlighting “how to” videos complementing the information in the manual.
• The image at the top is our CEO Scott’s business card with a QR code on the back which leads to his public profile on LinkedIn. This is a natural extension of the business card’s content where a more detailed bio is now available to the reader.

It is clear that QR codes are incredibly versatile and are only limited by your imagination. QR codes can encode a static URL or can also be dynamic in nature. QR codes can embed PURL (Personal URL) technology in a cross media direct marketing campaign so that response can be measured in a very detailed way.

At Sorrento Mesa Printing we have many new and innovative ways to incorporate QR codes into your print projects. If you are interested, just let us know. Below are some resources you might find helpful.

QR Code Reader Apps:

• Kaywa Reader
• Neoreader
• BeeTag Reader
• Barcodes Reader for iPhone
• BlackBerry Mesenger 5.0
• QuickMark Reader
• i-nigma Reader
• Upcode Reader
• ScanLife Reader

By Nicole Fletcher

With the insane explosion of the social sphere over the last year, football and marketing fans alike woke up Sunday morning with lofty expectations for Super Bowl XLV. Like little kids on Christmas morning, many wondered what social wonder would reveal itself during the biggest televised event of the year, or ever as was the case. The hype, I must say, was not worth the wait..not that there was a wait…

Brands including Volvo, Doritos and a few others released their ads days before the Super Bowl and while I understand why, they killed the fun anticipation of the unveil. I’m all for hype, fan interaction, video views etc, but instead of just spilling the marbles all at once, couldn’t they have figured out another way to build the excitement? A campaign or a plan perhaps? Apparently not.

As consumers, socially savvy professionals and beer drinking Americans we still expected a creative and colorful call to action, thereby driving traffic to social networks, increasing consumer interaction and basically boggling our minds. Needless to say, this Social Super Bowl included nothing more than the banal facebook url, twitter icon and social buying commercials from sites like Groupon and Living Social. What was most surprising to me  though is that people were actually impressed by this lackluster icon inclusion. I was not. I think the corporate brands copped out and frankly, it just seemed lazy, haphazard and not well planned out.

Here are some fun stats to illustrate my point. According to Nielsen, a record breaking 111 million Americans sat down Sunday night to take in the game. The second spot goes to last year’s Super Bowl with 106.5 million viewers while M*A*S*H rocked the number one spot before then with 160 million. 30 second time slots top off at $3 million, or $100,000 per second. Yea. Digest that for a moment.

Now, onto more stats. Fan numbers were recorded at 3pm on Sunday before the big game. Then, 29 hours later, to give people enough time to digest, contemplate, interact, etc, fan counts were taken again. As a whole for all Super Bowl advertisers, the number of ‘likes’ went up by a whisper of .19%. Granted, for brands like Coca Cola with their ~22 million fans, .19% can be a sizable increase, but their community went up by less that .1%. Not super solid considering the price tag, the audience and the sizable potential they held in their hands, not to mention that I don’t have stats on Coca Cola’s daily fan increase.

I’m not saying that some of the ads weren’t clever, nor that they were ineffective. I giggled at a few and was entertained in the general sense of the word. I’ll say this though, I have not sought any of them out on youtube to relive the hilarity, nor have I visited any of the brand websites since. I mean if you, cough, GoDaddy want to spend $3 million to get 892 new fans, Party On. I’ll just do what you did for free.

In sum, I wholeheartedly believe that the definition of modern communication, consumer interaction and marketing have changed and as such, classic clever commercials are no longer an option. Be creative people. It’s 2011 and trust me, at $100,000/second, 27 new fans just ain’t worth it (sorry Kia).

Here’s to next year where with any luck, my #(hashtag) will be #awesome.

By Robert Blodgett
Yuck.  Isn’t there just something inherently wrong with noshing on grub that looks as though it’s on its final leg on this earth. Not if you’re a Jets fan. One bagel maker in New York thought it funny to create a bagel that reflected his love (certainly not my love) for his team.  And guess what, the reaction across the country has been “Bravo bagel maker.” His quick thinking on drawing attention to a business that normally isn’t associated with American football has created a public relations home run…er…touchdown!  Proof that being creative…and a bit courageous (like Rex Ryan, the boisterous coach of the Jets) can lead to some great exposure.  The lesson here for any business is to keep an eye for opportunity to help spread some attention about your biz.  Go green!

By Nicole Fletcher

At the heart of any company’s social media strategy lies content, fresh, engaging, inquisitive and pertinent content. Pretty simple right? You’d think so, but I can’t tell you how many people and brands are involved in social media just for the sake of being in with the in crowd, and not because they’re actually committing to engaging in a marketing strategy capable of achieving staggering results.

1/12 of the world’s population is on Facebook. Take a second to realize the insanity that lies within that fact. 1/12 of the entire world’s population is connected by one network on the World Wide Web when the web itself didn’t exist only a few decades ago. Those billions of people update, comment and like daily, engaging with their friends and family on the book of faces, projecting their voices into the cyber-sphere. Those people don’t disguise their voices online so why should your business? Those people are selective with what they post, as to not overwhelm, annoy or offend their friends and family, and your business should be the same way.

Social Media is a two way street in that while you certainly want to promote your brand, you also want to give your fans/followers what they want to ensure their  loyalty. There are a number of brands that do a great job with this and I’ll use them to illustrate the right way to create and share content.

1. Know the voice of your brand - Skittles kills it in this area posting witty, funny, recognizable, bro-ish posts both pertinent to the Skittles brand and totally random ones as well. For example:  “Oh wow. I just made something awesome in my garage. And I’m sending it out to one lucky Rainbro” and “Just got a fortune cookie fortune telling me to stop taking advice from strange cookies”. Before stumbling upon this fan page, I wasn’t even aware of this SoCal strong vibe…but I dig it and clearly the fans do too seeing as each post gets ~10,000 likes. Party on Skittles

2. Know your target market – Thrillist does a great job with finding and creating market specific content. Their people like to know about weird cool things going on in specific cities and nationwide so they promote Thrillist specific interesting, engaging content AND non-affiliated awesome stuff, thereby keeping their fans and followers happy and loyal.

3. Solve problems - Your people are hanging out on social networks in real time so why not help them while they’re there? They’ll appreciate the effort and be loyal for life as a result. J&P Cycles is the perfect example both for this point and the next. They seamlessly fuse punctuality with expert problem solving skill and that is the key to customer service success in social media.

4. Time is of the essence -Online conversations have a short shelf-life, meaning that businesses really need to be on their A game with respect to response time. If a client or customer has a question, get back to them as soon as possible. Work social media monitoring into your daily routine so that you’re aware of the chatter going on about your brand. And guess what? There’s an app for that – tweetdeck, hootsuite or even facebook and twitter for iphone/Droid are a few  of the many free apps out there and available for you to use. Happy downloading,

5. Use your head - No one wants to visit a fan page/twitter account with identical posts back to back or numerous updates scheduled and posted at the exact same time. Make an excel spread sheet if you’re scheduling out your posts. Keep track of what you post/schedule at what time each day and make sure you have an appropriate balance of self promotion and other awesome content. Throw in fun information you think your target market will enjoy and if you’re scheduling, that’s great, but if something in real time happens, make sure to include it. Fresh current content is always the best.

Social Media, as a rule, makes sense. Find your voice and run with it. Be creative. Think outside the box. Bloom. Blossom. Grow. Create – success will soon follow.