Google has made an effort to support its struggling print portion of adwords. They are allowing 2-D bar codesto be inserted in the print buy so that users with special phone software can scan the bar code and the mobile website can be launched/tracked. This seems all fine and dandy and a great solution in a war room with several options scribbled on a white board, however, practicality will prevail and this will fail. As Al Ries puts it, convergence leads to death.
Not only does the user have to go through the hassle of scanning the code from their phone, their phone needs to have the special software that can read the code. The article says Nokia phones has it, but to be honest, I haven’t seen too many nokia phones around lately. The other issue i have with this solution, is what the hell is the value for the customer to scan this code? If its a print ad, it will have the offer, the product and most likely a url if it’s driving to the web. I am much more likely to type the url in my browser on my phone than scan some small 2-D code.
It’s one of those ideas that seems to make sense to solve a solution, but just won’t work. Google is trying to become the everything to everyone in marketing and it appears it just isn’t easy.
Tags: Google, Google print, media buying, tracking offline media
