MetzMash

Should Your Brand Semacode?

There was a great post a few weeks ago on Influential Internet marketing about how brands like H&M are using little Semacodes on billboard ads in Europe. This is pretty cutting-edge stuff, but I've heard that it's been used in Japanese urban outdoor advertising for some time now. BMW even began using it back in June.

From what I've read, it looks like the precursor to Semacode technology was QR Code, which was invented by the Japanese Denso-Wave Corporation about 13 years ago, and the evolution has only grown to include brands and mobile marketing in recent months . So, the question you're probably asking yourself is: what is the reason that a brand would want to do something like this and how is this social media?

Well, if you're competing in the outdoor advertising space and you want to allow consumers to go straight  to checkout, bypassing retail or traditional internet channels, then semacoding is a good idea to investigate.

A case in point (a scenario posed by Gizmodo): a prospective H&M customer walking by a billboard could see a cool shirt, snap a picture of the semacode, and then the cell phone is directed to a size/color menu where they could personalize the purchase. Obvious applications here are music and film (or any digital good like concert tickets).

Here's how it works: once the end user has the Semacode application on their phone, they can scan Semacode tags and use/experience the mobile content. The folks over at Semacode call this ubiquitous computing. Is this social media? Well, it depends. If Semacode is being used as a point-of-entry to facilitate two-way dialogue, sure. If not, well, then it's little more than  bar code call-to-action, trying to convince someone to make a purchase.

The real clearinghouse for all information regarding Semacodes is semacode.org . And yes, that little link in the top-left corner is the semacode for MetzMash.

Microformats: Do You Need To Know This?

I've been reading up on microformats for the last few weeks and spending a bit of time over at Microformats.org. Today, I came across a pretty interesting but very dense book by John Allsopp called Microformats: Empowering Your Markup for Web 2.0. (For your convenience, I've added the title to the Metzmash Canteen). The point of understanding how microformats will play in your future communications and marketing is all about figuring out how your brand is going to answer questions.

How is your toilet company, for example, going to answer a question like, "What is a toilet that will fit into a 38" x 24" x 24" space in our new bathroom, that doesn't use a lot of water and is available in black?"

It would probably take a human searching on the Kohler website and about 15 or 20 minutes to figure that out (have you figured out that I'm in the bathroom remodel market yet?). But there probably is a toilet on that website that meets those exact specifications. That's where microformats could feasibly come in - product pages and PDFs can be enabled for better searchability. That's what John Allsopp's book is all about.

Chapters One and Two are a sturdy preview of what you need to know about microformats, and there's a fairly solid breakdown of publishers who are currently using them (Yahoo, Cork'd, Eventful, Apple, edgeio). The later chapters get into some real heavy stuff that you'll want to look over with the I.T. department, but Parts One, Three and Four look like they're gonna be required reading for marketing and brand managers in the next few months.

The bits and pieces of Alsopp's book that I've investigated are definitely on the geekier side of the marketing spectrum, but if you're looking for a pretty solid download on emerging best practices of the semantic web, this is a helluva place to start.