UK singer-songwriter Joss Stone is launching a line of clothing she helped design with American fashion retailer Nine West. To promote the line, Nine West is printing 2d mobile barcodes from JAGTAG onto product packaging and advertising.
What’s the story?
JAGTAG must be one of the most brand-friendly mobile barcode providers out there, judging by the amount of attention it’s gotten recently. Cinemas, alcohol merchants, movie studios and fashion houses have all signed up with the provider. And there are two main reasons for this (that I can see):
1) It doesn’t need a smartphone. Most mobile barcoding solutions require the user to have a smartphone. They scan the barcode with an application, where it is decoded. But JAGTAG works through MMS. The user just needs to have a cameraphone – they take a snap of the code and MMS it off to a provided shortcode. JAGTAG then decodes it and sends the attached content (or URL) back to the device by SMS. This hugely increases the number of people who can use the service.
2) Brandcoding. The major barcode standards (like QR Codes or Datamatrix) are fairly uninspiring visually – as they’re mostly a series of black and white squares. JAGTAGs, on the other hand, will place the logo or brand image of the company they’re dealing with straight into the barcode. They’ve done this with the Joss Stone codes, for example – they’re incorporating her tattoos into the design of the codes.
What’s the Nine West deal?
The JAGTAG codes will be appearing on product packing sold in-store, and also printed on promotional material including posters and magazine ads. Users who scan the codes will get access to exclusive content from Joss Stone, like text and video messages, and behind-the-scenes video footage. More importantly, they’ll be entered into a sweepstakes, with the chance to win shoes, clothing, jewelry and other accessories.
What we think?
This isn’t the first fashion brand that has signed on with JAGTAG, as we mentioned above, and it won’t be the last. I’m usually pretty down on proprietary barcode formats, but JAGTAG is so user friendly and has been used by so many brands that it really is doing a great job of raising awareness of barcodes in general.
Cian – Thanks for the great post!
JC