Smartphones help magazines become interactive

Black-and-white codes on a page from the March issue of Esquire can link Web-enabled phones to styling advice for items in the magazine.
credit photo:(NYT photo)

Print may be a flat medium, but that has not stopped magazine publishers from trying to add dimension to their pages. For at least a decade, they have been experimenting with bar codes and icons that could take readers to Web sites, trying to add a bit of Internetlike interactivity to their pages.

But the average consumer did not own a bar-code reader—until now. With the sudden ubiquity of smartphones, which have apps that can read bar codes, and cameraphones, which can easily snap pictures of icons, magazines like Esquire and InStyle are adding interactive graphics to their articles, while Entertainment Weekly and Star are including them in ads.

Meanwhile, publishers using text-messaging programs to try to enliven their pages are packing information into the messages and using reader responses to calibrate their coverage.

The idea is not new. Back in 2000, a company called Digital:Convergence introduced a product called the :CueCat. The premise was advanced, but simple. Pages could be printed with bar codes, which readers could scan, and then be connected to specific Internet sites. That would help them find the shirt being advertised, or specs on the Ford truck they liked.

But the technology was clunky. Publications using the :CueCat, including Forbes and Wired, had to mail a hand-held scanner and a CD-Rom with :CueCat software to their subscribers. The subscribers had to install the software, then attach the device to their computer and wave it over the printed bar codes. It wasn’t portable or easy, and, in most cases, it was more trouble than doing a search or typing in a lengthy Web address. That’s a major reason the :CueCat disappeared.

Today, though, consumers don’t need a :CueCat—they have a cell phone.

“This idea is basically the same—it’s just everyone has a scanner in their pocket,” said Jonathan B. Bulkeley, the chief executive of Scanbuy, which is working on a mobile program with Esquire, among other publications.

Of course, 10 years later, some concerns remain. Publishers can print bar codes to their hearts’ content, but getting consumers to understand and use them is another matter. While bar codes are integrated into everyday life in countries like Japan—people get nutrition information from bar codes on McDonald’s hamburger wrappers—American consumers have never quite picked up the habit. And now that search engines are fast and accurate, advertisers and publishers will most likely need to offer something spectacular, not just a plain Web page, to get people to bother scanning anything.

On its March issue, Esquire will print Scanbuy codes in a spread on The Esquire Collection—”the 30 items a man would need to get through life,” said David Granger, editor in chief. Printed near each item will be a small code that looks like a group of black and white squares. Readers scan the code into an Internet-enabled phone, and the code takes them to a mobile menu that provides Esquire’s styling advice for the item and information on where to buy it.

An application called ScanLife, widely available online as a free download, turns a phone into a bar-code reader. Versions exist for the iPhone and BlackBerry as well as Android-based handsets, and the app comes preloaded on many Sprint phones in the United States. ScanLife can also read many standard bar codes on many phones, so it can perform price comparisons, for example.

“We kept hearing about different technologies that enabled people to close the gap between the inspiration of seeing something in a magazine and then going to do something about it,” Granger said.

Though Esquire will be giving readers information about stores where they can buy items, Granger said, for now the magazine would not be seeking a percentage of sales resulting from use of the technology.

“I’m not sure we have a smooth way of getting a cut yet,” he said, “but it would be nice if this takes off.”

Granger added, however, that Esquire would need to carefully consider questions about editorial integrity raised by such technology.

Bulkeley said that Esquire’s choice to introduce Scanbuy with its editorial pages, rather than with ads, made sense. “I think advertisers will see that and say, ‘Hey, can we do that too?’ But it is important for editorial to lead, to show advertisers they are supporting it, because there is an educational component necessary,” he said.

Levi’s Dockers khaki pants are among the items featured in the Esquire spread. Jennifer Sey, vice president for global marketing for Dockers, said the company was interested to see how readers respond, adding that running ads containing a code “is a really interesting idea—it’s certainly something that we would consider.”

Rather than running a printed code on its pages, InStyle is using photographs of clothes as the key that links print and online.

In its March issue, InStyle will run a “clothes we love” article, and will direct readers to hold up the pages featuring each of six items, like a miniskirt and a safari jacket, to their Web cameras. The browser will then open related three-dimensional videos.

“We’re going to show you how to pull outfits together, how to take it from day to night, how to take it from work to weekend,” said InStyle’s managing editor, Ariel Foxman. In the InStyle project, the clothing image itself connects the printed page with the Web. It “doesn’t have a big honking marker that you then have to explain, a big black box or some sort of weird graphic,” he said. “Nothing would be worse than turning a page and seeing cute merchandise surrounded by a big black box.”

While Scanbuy requires software to work, and InStyle’s project requires a Web camera, other companies are using standard cameraphone technologies to make print more interactive.

SpyderLynk surrounds client logos with a coded ring, and asks consumers to snap photos of the images, then text or e-mail them to a certain address. Their technology allows consumers with even basic phones to interact with the printed page. “You really reduce a person’s ability to engage if you force them to go to a Web site or download an app,” said Nicole Skogg, chief executive of SpyderLynk, which is based in Denver.

The ringed logos, which are called SnapTags, have appeared in ads in recent issues of Everyday Food, Entertainment Weekly and Star Magazine. Clients can choose what consumers receive in a text or e-mail message reply: ring tones, videos or more information, for example.

Jane McPherson, chief marketing officer for SpyderLynk, said the company’s average response rate from magazines was about 0.2 percent, similar to that of online display ads.

Magazines including People StyleWatch and ESPN The Magazine have been accompanying products and ads with text-messaging codes from a company called Snipp. Readers transmit the code to S-N-I-P-P, along with their e-mail address, and receive an e-mail reply providing more information or special offers. The magazines can use the codes to see what is popular with readers.

At StyleWatch, for instance, many readers have used Snipp for inexpensive items like a $14 sundress, and for popular name brands like Coach, a spokeswoman, Amy Galleazzi, said in an e-mail message. Some advertisers are avoiding the middleman and just printing standard bar codes, which are known as QR codes, for quick-response codes. They can be read by many applications, though a consumer first needs to download one of those mobile apps.

Last year, the financial services company TIAA-CREF ran print ads for its retirement planning services that contained a QR code. When scanned, the QR code took readers to a Web site offering a click-to-speak link that would connect them by phone with an investment adviser.

“This was convenient and easy to produce,” said Jeff Fleischman, chief digital officer for TIAA-CREF. “It really doesn’t cost anything other than making the code.”

Still, Fleischman said, a lot of explanation was necessary to get consumers to interact with the code.

“It is something that I think we were pretty early to the game with,” he said. “We had dozens and dozens of people who ended up calling us, which was better than we thought we would get.” (NYT)

Source: manila bulletin
www.mb.com.ph

Recommended articles:

Understanding Asian Skin

Smartphones help magazines become interactive

Iconic eyewear Ray Ban’s special-edition collection

Two fabulous finishes for your lips

For instant slim, look to bodyshapers

In jeans, the new old school