Monday, November 1, 2010

2D Barcodes in Indian advertising

I was surprised to read the advertisement at the lower of half of business line today.


The Godrej Interio Ad

  Zoom in towards the upper right hand of the advertisement and you can see a nice black and white pattern. Now, thats not a design, but a 2 D bar code. . Thats a new way of advertising in fact. If you have a smartphone, you could use one of the several bar code scanner apps and scan the bar code. That would take you to their advertising websites.


 If you don't have one, just send an sms GIGREEN to 56767 and they would send you their own app that will scan and direct you to their ad page.

 



 I tried the app on a Nokia 6300 with a 2 MP camera, I needed to try several times before I succeeded (most likely due to a poor exposure from the camera).  I hope its better on the newer mobile phones.







 If the bar code scanning succeeds, it would take you to a product catalog from which you could get further information by selecting the appropriate product.

The product catalog


Details on a product



This is a new way of advertising, have 2D bar codes with web addresses that people can scan and obtain further product information. I have seen this being used in the android app market and I believe it is in use in western countries for general products too. And it is catching up here in India too!