Sports Illustrated is planning a big promotional push for its forthcoming iconic swimsuit issue. For the annual release, SI will employ mobile barcodes to entice prospective buyers and readers with exclusive, advance photos.
The January 25th issue of Sports Illustrated will unveil the barcodes – along with other publications similarly owned by Time Inc – in order to help hype the Swimsuit Issue, which hits newsstands February 9th.
The barcodes will also be featured on everything from New York City subway ads to Las Vegas hotel room keys. Covering as much territory as possible, Sports Illustrated is hoping customers will be motivated to use their handset to photograph the barcodes in order to receive the aforementioned “exclusive photos” that highlight a fresh crop of new models making their debut in the Swimsuit Issue.
Charlie Saunders, executive director of integrated marketing for the SI Group, says: “I don’t know that [the swimsuit issue] needs promotion, but we like to drum up excitement about it.”
Last year, SI’s Swimsuit Issue was a rousing success, selling better than four million copies. The publication’s new mobile marketing endeavor will likely help drive sales of the 2010 issue even higher.
What kind of barcodes? what information will be included in the barcode?
These are interesting details to those who might be interested in this type of technology.
Agree with Stephen. Are they QR codes? Will people need to download a reader first? If so, massive fail in terms of uptake compared to an SMS call to action.
Looks like they’re using JagTag’s barcode technology which is MMS-based. Snap a photo of the barcode, send via MMS, retrieve content…
Agree with Stephen.
Thanks to mobile marketing, the magazines can interact with their customers.
The MMS solution is far better than the solutions which require consumers to download a reader. It’s image recognition really, as opposed to barcode reading. Still have no idea why they wouldn’t just get people to text in “SI” to a shortcode and sent the MMS in response to that? The whole point should be to make MORE likely people will interact, rather than less! Surely the people pushing QR etc (and this) know that SMS would perform better?
I don’t agree that sending an MMS everytime you want content is a better idea than a one-time download of an application. I think users will get bored and frustrated with the process. Further how will consumers know which barcodes have the image-recognition capability? Jagtag’s solution is quite confusing and have several drawbacks. I am a big believer in QR codes, and they are making a serious push into the mainstream. However, as QR codes have not hit mass adoption, SMS still offers the strongest performance for brands, agencies, publishers, etc.
Ryan- good point, there definitely needs to be some standardization in this space. Hopefully as the concept matures and usability increases, some standardized methods can be established.
QR codes won the race in other parts of the world, and as such it’s hit mainstream because it’s not segmented by various technologies, access-methods, etc. In time, the same will happen here…hopefully.
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