Another day in London - another sighting of a QR code! This time, on a poster for high-brow art-house flick The Mechanic. Quite close to the bottom of the poster - so low, I had to kneel to scan it - is a QR code. Scan it and it takes you a mobile friendly trailer on YouTube. Issues It wouldn't be a Terence Eden blog post if I didn't criticise the approach taken by the advertisers. QR code is far too low down - who wants to stoop to scan (other than nerds like me)? No call to…
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I'm a big fan of Groupon - the money saving site - that's why I'm so disappointed with their latest campaign. A nice simple set of banners. Let's gloss over the missing apostrophe in this one though... Which leads to the Groupon mobile friendly site. Well formatted mobile site. Free text field for an email address and a drop down list of cities they support. There's no notion of what they'll do with the email address - which is very naughty - but the worst is yet to come. After filling…
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After the derisory efforts of Waitrose to properly utilise QR codes, it's disheartening to see Debenhams make a brand new mistake. At the bottom of tonight's Evening Standard is this advert from Debenhams. Debenhams QR Advert The QR code immediately caught my eye and - being the saddo that I am - I immediatley whipped out ZXing and scanned it in. Debenhams QR Code What goodies would it net me? A URL to visit their mobile site? Contact details for a Christmas order line? …
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What a joy for fans of 2D codes. London's freesheet "Metro" has adverts with two different styles of 2D codes on pages 14 and 15. In the left corner - John Lewis sporting a QR Code. In the right corner - the Donkey from Shrek going into battle with an MS Tag. FIGHT! QR Code This use of QR code leaves me a little conflicted. On the one hand, the code is too small and, either in resizing or printing, has become distorted. On the other hand, the code resolves to a great mobile site. …
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What's this I spy from across Woking Station? Why! An advert for the Olympus PEN - complete with a QR code! The QR code is near the bottom, and has some explanatory text letting you know how to use it. There's even a shortcode to get a reader. The URL that's sent back from the SMS is http://www.isitetv.com/mobile/reader.html which redirects to the popular i-nigma reader. A clearer shot of the QR card The QR resolves to http://www.isitetv.com/pen-m1.htm?INGUID=17662. The Mobile Site …
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British Gas has announced its latest price rise to near universal dismay. So it seams a little odd that they're running a campaign based around how much you could save if you switch to them. Still, what concerns me in this Mobile Badvertising series is not the content, but the execution and usability. Let's see what happens when we click on it. Clicking the advert takes you to your phone's dial screen with British Gas's phone number ready to dial. (This goes via an ad network so they can…
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Two of the biggest "mass market" brands are using QR Codes in their advertising. ASDA - the UK arm of Walmart - and Martina Cole - one of the UK's best selling authors. Here's the poster in situ Here's a close up of the code It's a reasonable physical size and the information density isn't particularly high - so well done on that front. I'd place a bit more whitespace around the code - but it scanned easily enough on my phone. The website itself is ok. Nothing stunning. It's a great…
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Sometimes a mobile advert is just so bad that you wonder what drugs the people who commissioned were on. Easy A is new film aimed squarely a the youth market. Perfect fodder for mobile advertising. Cute little advert, doesn't say what it will link to, but other than that, not bad. So let's click through and see what happens. Sweet! YouTube has an excellent mobile optimised site. The ability to share the video on Facebook and Twitter is sure to make this baby go viral. Right? Right? As t…
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Three failures and one giant lost opportunity Failure 1 - Targeting This version of the Tesco shopping app is only available on Nokia phones. Nothing wrong with that - Nokia are still the biggest phone seller on the planet. So why allow the advert to be shown to Android users? It will annoy users, reduce your CPM, and make users less likely to click on adverts in future. Failure 2 - Sizing This is the full resolution on the advert. (full resolution) 168*28 is barely enough to contain…
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Peugeot's new mobile advert has a couple of critical flaws - but has just enough innovation to redeem it in my eyes. Read on to find the two basic mistakes they made, how to solve them, and the cool feature you should be incorporating into your adverts. (more…) …
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I've mentioned Nokia on here a few times. For a mobile focused company, they seem to have a real problem with mobile advertising. It starts well enough with an animated GIF. The site it links to is http://music.nokia.co.uk/ - cleverly, Nokia redirect mobile users to a specific mobile version of the site. That's where it all starts to go wrong... (more…) …
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UPDATED 08 October 2010 How to unsubscribe If you want to unsubscribe from this SMS spam, you have three options. Ring "Dill" on 0121 359 0234 - she works for Floors2Go and will be happy to remove you from the list. Floors2Go purchased your phone number from tmnmedia - who assured Floors2Go that you were desperately interested in getting SMS spam. Call them on 020 7936 6600. Or call Matt Love 020 7936 6520 - you can also email him on matt.love@tmnmedia.com - Matt was responsible for …
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