From Print to Phone to Web. And a Sale?

"Item Level Intelligence" (Radio Frequency Identification) will eventually replace bar codes on products. Smartphones will integrate that function to make point-of-sale more interactive and possibly ad/PR more interactive. In the meantime, to get more product info available to shoppers and ad/PR measurement for business, publishers are using scan/web/text messaging to get consumers to interact.

Smartphones that can read bar codes are allowing magazines to add Internet-like interactivity to print graphics and advertisements.

NY Times

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

Published: January 10, 2010

Print may be a flat medium, but that has not stopped magazine publishers from trying to add dimension to their pages. For at least a decade, they have been experimenting with bar codes and icons that could take readers to Web sites, trying to add a bit of Internetlike interactivity to their pages.

But the average consumer did not own a bar-code reader — until now. With the sudden ubiquity of smartphones, which have apps that can read bar codes, and cameraphones, which can easily snap pictures of icons, magazines like Esquire and InStyle are adding interactive graphics to their articles, while Entertainment Weekly and Star are including them in ads.

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