Retailers link with QR Codes

This is a photograph of several retailers with QR codes printed on their brochures -  gracefully taken by Alex Dalidakis for his blog “love number two“. This was not taken yesterday or last month.

Alex (Twitter: @alex_d13) already in his blog post dated 25 July 2011 says that QR codes will take off in Australia and that it possibly already has. As someone who ” has a background in marketing but nowadays looks more towards how marketing can integrate traditional thinking into new media” this young person has given us another impetus for healthcare to adopt these new means of engagement.

Alex and I both found in our mailbox the following items not necessarily in similar order to each other;

1. Woolworths promoting more recipes online
2. Mitre 10 promoting DIY videos online
3. Bunnings, similarly with DIY videos, but also with store locator
4. Bras ‘n Things with a store locator QR code

In Alex’s post, he poses a vital question to the corporate world; “have we surpassed QR codes”? My answer to this question is simple, unfortunately it is another question; “have you heard of NFC?” Near Field Communication is a much simpler way to connect information in real life to your mobile device, helping you store, access, map and expand on information without even turning on your scanner. Take a look at ‘Poken‘ for a good example of NFC. So we are at the brink of surpassing QR codes, but those who got in early and trialled it will be able to turnover better quality results when NFC is available in all smartphones.

More smartphones will be manufactured with built-in NFC, and the talk of the town so far is about using your phone to pay and conduct other transactions and leaving your wallet at home. What does this mean for healthcare? Just off my head, there are ideas in mobile health that work by triggering motivated individuals to take better care of their chronic conditions by touching their smartphone against a menu or product in the supermarket. They then receive nutritional information and ideas for food preparation. Remember the Fogg Behavior Model? We have to make a behavior easy to do. By providing information at the touch of a smartphone for someone trying to lose weight and keep fit, we are make ‘shaping’ a new behavior, easy to do.

Implications for the healthcare  industry

I think the longer we hesitate to adopt, experiment and find out what works for the public and our clients, the harder it is going to get for health communications to pin down what works and what doesn’t in an effort to practice evidence based health communications.