Scott Seaborn (no, that’s not his picture) writes to tell us about a new marketing channel his company, Magnet Harlequin, has developed.
Snap Happy (no relation to MobHappy) allows people to take a photo with their mobile of a specific item and MMS it into a central number. In this case, the item is the poster advertising the theatrical release of “Mr Bean Goes on Holiday”. When Snap Happy recognizes the photo, it can respond with a predetermined message. It works even if the photo is only a partial image or taken in poor light.
In this case, people sending the correct image receive back an offer to download a game, ringtone or video, featuring Mr Bean. What’s more, the system identifies the phone and ensures that the content is optimized for that model.
I’ve written a lot before about the mobile phone connecting the physical and digital worlds together, as a sort of virtual mouse and predicting that this application has huge potential and implications in the way we interact with technology.
It’s also fun to interact in this way and I’m sure that initial participation will be high.
Clearly, QR codes and the like do a similar job up to a point, but they still need to be distributed into the real world and the technology needs to be installed on the handset - both are significant barriers to adoption.
The beauty with this technology means that the object that the user interacts with can be anything and that “anything” could already exist. Sure, we can do it with specially printed posters, but an unadapted logo of a retailer can be used as the stimulus, or existing brand packaging or an airline stewardess’s uniform. The limits are the marketer’s imagination.
Of course, there are still issues to be overcome. Does the user have the right settings? Do they know how to use MMS? Will they know how much the MMS costs to send? And how much will the content download cost too?
But overall, I think this is an exciting development and look forward to other successful campaigns.
Ok, I am a convert and a QR code preacher too, so take my words as biased as you want. But I guess, I also studied people a lot using our services and I somehow feel where the MMS fits and where it doesn’t.
I think that there are many ways to get mobile content and the more they are the better it is. However, if I use a simple SMS , I get a cheaper and faster response channel than if I have to send an expensive MMS. The comparison in adoption of SMS and MMS is quite telling. Interestingly people still take a lot of photographs, but they rarely send them; whereas - at the same time- they send a lot of SMS . And if the image cannot be recognized as promised users will probably not try over and over again.
With QR Codes, the resolution happens on the phone itself at no cost for the user.
And now that Nokia starts putting QR Code Readers in the N93 and N95, I guess all this will accelerate pretty fast.
My concern over this methodology is that is quite expensive for the consumer and I would like to know the accuracy rates in terms of submissions vs successful identification.
I think QR codes are part of the answer but I also think that they can be improved e.g http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/view_entry.html?id=450. Furthe,r NFC/RFID will also have a place and indeed provide and innovative distribution mechanism as will some form of virtual geotagging. I guess the bottom line is that we are still evolving and as with most things in mobile there is no definitive answer
I wouldn’t see pricing as the hindering factor for that methodology. (Some operators are in fact beginning to charge an MMS at the same price as an SMS.) However, I also agree that it’s the error rate that makes or breaks this system: If people try it for the first time and get content thats totally unrelated to the picture they just snapped - just because the system returned a reasonably close match with the wrong reference image in the database - they probably won’t try it again. QR codes might be more robust here.