But to have the QR code make the leap from Latest Marketing Craze to Useful Marketing Tool, savvy marketers will need to bear in mind the following when incorporating QR codes into their marketing materials:

QR Codes are read by smartphones — so the information they convey is only useful to smartphone users with a barcode scanner app.

Duh, right?

The implications of this simple fact, however, have been evading some early riders of the QR code wave.  Smart marketers can avoid unnecessary pitfalls if they consider the following points when devising QR code strategies:

• Fewer than half of people in the U.S. own a smartphone, and not everyone with a smartphone has — or uses — a barcode scanner.  As smartphones continue to grab market share, QR code use will become a natural part of how we communicate.  But for now, if your campaign DEPENDS on information delivered via QR code, it is imperative that your target market is comprised of habitual users of this technology.  If this is not the case, then a QR code should be used to enhance, rather than to deliver, your campaign essentials.

• QR codes won’t work in places where a cell phone user can’t access the Internet. Using a QR code inside a hospital?  Be sure you’ve checked your intended location for a decent cellular signal. Planning on featuring a QR code in your subway signage? Unless you can have it placed at an above-ground entrance, you might want to reconsider.  Using the QR code in an in-flight magazine?  If the airline doesn’t offer in-flight wi-fi, your results are apt to be disappointing.

• QR codes that lead to a website not optimized for cell phone use are just plain irritating.  If your landing page can’t be easily read or navigated by a handheld device, you’re actually delivering negative brand equity to the person scanning your code.  Optimize your landing page — or skip the QR code.  Oh, and if you’re using Flash on your website, you’ll lose the roughly 25% of mobile users with iPhones… something else to consider.

Finally… the ultimate “epic fail” of a QR in a marketing effort is a code that doesn’t work. Like phone and fax numbers, it’s smart to check these by using them before putting the project to bed — so before you send the email or approve the printer’s proof, try the code yourself on as many devices as you can first.

For more information on the technology of QR codes, check out our post on our News You Can Use blog. In our next post, we’ll look at creative ways to render and use QR codes. If you’ve done a treatment or campaign you’d like to share with others, please tell us your story here in the Comment section!

However, one of the pitfalls of using inexpensive stock images is you just never know when a particular model is going to turn “hot” and suddenly start showing up everywhere — including such awkward locations as your competitor’s product literature.

Several years ago, a straw-hatted granny featured on the cover of ye olde PhotoDisc Volume 33 seemed to be appearing on everything from pharmacy ads to church bulletins. Blessedly, she’s since faded from view … but suddenly, a newcomer has burst on the downloadable image scene: a 50-ish businessman type that’s known at our studio as the “There’s That Guy Again!” Guy.

TTGA Guy actually made a debut here in our own work about 3 years ago as astand-in for an education executive after a tortured search for a budget-priced photo of a smart, friendly-looking, OLDER professional male yielded few credible results.  (Doesn’t he look approachable and engaging?)

Nevertheless, despite the fact that good stock pix of mature professionals are still as hard to come by as a World Series victory for the Cubs, we’re going to have to retire TTGA Guy’s jersey here at NYN due to his regrettable overexposure.

In just the last few months, we’ve nabbed TTGA Guy posing as a business consultant, a doctor (awkwardly also showing up as a patient in the same publication), a “biosciences industry decision-maker,” an Israeli investor (complete with a totally unconvincing Photoshopped yarmulke), and a creepy Craigslist advertiser of unknown professional background.

Have YOU seen TTGA Guy?  Post your screen caps of him here — we’d love to add them to our collection.  Do you know him? Let him know that whatever he was paid for that shoot, it wasn’t nearly enough.  Do you know any stock-agency photographers?  Tell them to quit stuffing their online portfolios with cute 20-year-olds, and go for the geezers — it’s clearly where the action is.

• Sophisticated algorithms are delivering display ads in a highly targeted manner. A major reason the online advertising community will resist Do Not Track legislation (see the three previous posts here at the Scout for more details) is that advertising can now be targeted to people whose prior online activities demonstrate potential interest in an advertiser’s product or service.  This level of targeted ad placement effectively becomes a form of “stealth search,” which enables a much higher response rate than randomly placed ads (and provides a more relevant online user experience as well).

• Online display ads are becoming far more attractive and engaging. Gone are the days when “dynamic banner ad” meant a mortgage come-on with states and rates jumping off the screen in electric-green type. Digital video and the sophisticated animation capabilities now available in Adobe’s CS5.5 products put beautiful, attention-getting online ads within reach of even limited budgets. As a result, display ads are becoming a seamless component of the online media experience, comparable to design-house ads in fashion magazines.

• In a word: Facebook. Statistics vary over whether Google or Facebook leads the display advertising pack — but there is no question that Facebook’s explosive growth over the past four years is reflected in its ad revenues.  Based on recent reports at Mashable.com, this single social media platform will account for anywhere from 12-16% of total display expenditures in 2011.  It is worth noting that Facebook advertising is generally known among professional advertisers to have marginal response rates, arguably due to the limits of Facebook’s low-key visual presentation of ads.  For Facebook to break out of its weight-loss and Facebook-fan-building advertising base, look for this platform to change the rules on ad visuals in coming years.

How have online display ads been working for YOU?  Are they performing as well as search in your marketing mix? Are you upgrading the look of your online display ads with digital video or animation? Share your thoughts with us here.

Is it possible that a uniform standard will emerge from all three sets of legislation?  Don’t bet on it… which leads us to:

Problem #3: How do you comply with Do Not Track legislation?

The simple answer to this question: Nobody knows — not even the people writing the legislation.

Rather than defining what “Do Not Track Me” actually means, the House bill, introduced by Rep. Jackie Speier, gives the Federal Trade Commission 18 months upon passage of the law to develop standards for companies to follow when tracking online users of their web portals.

In fact, establishing standards could prove a major sticking point for both the Federal and California statutes. In a related article from the online portal Ars Technica, a reader with the user name “taswyn” sums up the problem with these laws as effectively as anyone in the 100+ comment thread:

“The real issue here isn’t the privacy, or the implications for any one website.  The problem with a bill like this is actually one of infrastructure.”

Touché, taswyn!  He/she continues:

“What many people fail to realize is that the advertising they are seeing on a given site isn’t FROM that site.  So whom do you opt out with?  Is that site somehow supposed to now communicate this with any advertisers who are sharing page space on that site?”’

In other words… let’s say you’ve opted out of a website’s tracking features, and while visiting the site, you click on an ad.  The ad is most likely hosted on a different website unrelated to the site with the opt-out agreement.  Is the ad subject to or exempt from the opt-out requirements of the site — and who is responsible in either case?

In fact, markup on the California legislation carries a “support if amended” statement from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which focuses on this specific shortcoming of the California bill (and is a problem with the proposed Federal statute as well):

“We are particularly troubled by the (California) bill’s failure to clearly distinguish between first parties and third parties.  A ‘first party’ is a website a user knowingly visits and thus has a direct relationship with.  A ‘third party,’ such as a cross-domain advertising company, is often embedded within a first party site so that consumers may not even realize that the third-party tracking company is present, and thus cannot protect themselves.”

EFF supports a browser-based solution that applies to all online activities, rather than making Do Not Track the responsibility of individual websites, many of which are barely supported by the advertising revenues they presently earn.

But at least the Federal statute mandates the FTC develop specific guidelines to be followed.  The California bill is particularly troublesome in its lack of specifics regarding how to comply with the law:

“This bill does not contain language providing for how the opt-out method might functionally work.  It is presumed that the Attorney General, through the regulatory process, would determine this.”

Really?  The California State Attorney General is going to figure out how to make the opt-out function work?  Hm… does that mean someone would have to be sued for failure to comply before we all know what compliance actually looks like?

Taswyn also astutely notes another major problem with the California law: if your website user opts out, you somehow have to NOT log their presence in your server logs.  The legislation states:

“This bill would define ‘covered information’ to mean any of the following that is transmitted online: the online activity of the individual such as the Internet Web sites and content from those sites accessed; the date and hour of online access; the computer and geolocation from which online information was accessed; and the means by which information was accessed, such as a device, browser, or application…”

Apart from the question of how to properly maintain a server with incomplete logs, or who the responsible party would be in the event web hosting is subcontracted, this specification in the law would theoretically enable a malicious entity to opt out of tracking, then attack your website with impunity, because you cannot identify the source of the attack via your server logs.

Finally, the Federal statute imposes the following limitations:

“The bill would exempt government agencies, stores with information on fewer than 15,000 customers, or those who collect data on fewer than 10,000 people over a one-year period.’’

Presumably these exemptions were intended to give boot-strap online enterprises a pass on Do Not Track obligations (and don’t expect the government to live by its own rules!).  But this is yet another shortcoming of currently proposed law that would be more effectively addressed with browser-based solutions.  How would you know, as a visitor to a website, if they were exempt from Do Not Track obligations?  For that matter, what would happen to a small-scale website who unwittingly crosses the line of having too many customers? Would they be subject to harassment by trial attorneys trolling for a class-action suit?

Do Not Track legislation is a well-intended effort to protect the rights of consumers. But without some degree of “tracking,” the Internet cannot function properly — and anyone who is obliged to obey a Do Not Track law should have some reasonable expectation of knowing how to comply.  As written, the California law would leave even nonprofit, non-commercial websites potentially exposed to class-action lawsuits — and the rules for the federal statute have yet to be determined. A responsible statute should take into account the realities of how the Internet functions, deal directly with the issue of hidden third-party information gatherers, and clearly define the means by which one can operate within the law.

Unfortunately, neither he nor Mr. Flatow’s other guest provided any insight as to HOW any of these “several ways” the Do Not Track concept might be engineered to work.

In fact, when commenting on the Do Not Track concept, Felton did NOT refer to this it as a “list” or a “registry,” but rather a “system,” suggesting that government efforts to protect consumers may be far more complex than the “simple and universal mechanism” proposed earlier that same week by the Federal Communications Commission.  One major issue a list-type solution would present is the second problem with Do Not Track that we’ll examine here on The Scout.

Problem #2:  How do you define the entity that is not to be tracked?

Presently, “cookies” are the most widely known methods used for tracking online behaviors, and consumers have an assortment of options for managing these information-gathering tools, including blocking them altogether.

But cookies are crude compared to the nascent science of browser fingerprinting, which employs sophisticated algorithms to identify unique users by subtleties as distinctive as one’s typing cadence when entering passwords.

Exactly how would you identify yourself as a forbidden target to a system like this?

A telephone number is a very simple, direct connection to an end user.  But online, how does one define “who” or “what” not to track — and maintain that person’s anonymity at the same time to a digital entity that can detect that their typing is different from that of their roommate, spouse, or child?  Would a person on a Do Not Track list be required to establish a user name that he or she would need to use consistently as a log-in wherever online?  How would that ID be established?  Would it be by email address?  What if you had multiple email addresses, or a couple of mobile devices in addition to your laptop or desktop computer — would you have to register all of them on the Do Not Track list, or use a universal log-in for all devices?  What if you had an email address that was a “dead” address formerly used by someone on the Do Not Track list?  Would you be able to remove your address from the Do Not Track list?

Or suppose you wanted to grant some websites permission to track your online behavior and block others?  Presently, people who want to selectively frustrate online tracking can use multiple browsers, reserving a single browser for exclusive use with more information-invasive websites, such as Facebook, and using other browsers for sites where targeted information is useful to them.  Would these people be able to have multiple user IDs, some of which had tracking permissions and others which were on the Do Not Track registry?  If not, then using a Do Not Track registry could actually give them LESS control over their online experience than they have at present.

Another vexing question is: How reliable would such a list actually be?  For years, US immigration law has turned a blind eye to employers who hire undocumented workers because the Federal database of illegal aliens is so unreliable, authorities fear that legal US residents will be denied employment as a result.  Certainly denial of a content-rich online experience is scarcely comparable to being unable to get a job — but what if you’re the company alleged to be in violation of the Federal regulations, and are being prosecuted for an infraction because the Do Not Track database is faulty?

Which leads to the third question we’ll consider in our next post:

Problem #3: What is actually forbidden by Do Not Track legislation?

For more information on browser fingerprinting, visit http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/how-your-web-browser-rats-you-out-online.ars

Congress is presently engaged in a new effort to assure consumer online privacy, a core component of which is a “Do Not Track” registry of web users who want to block tracking of their web browsing habits.

A recent New York Times article reported the hearings are related to a Federal Trade Commission recommendation of “a simple and universal ‘do not track’ mechanism that would essentially give consumers the type of control they gained over marketers with the national ‘do not call’ registry.”

But will this truly be as simple as prohibiting annoying phone calls at dinnertime? And, more importantly, will this proposed new Internet regulation REALLY give users the kind of control they desire?

The Times story failed to examine the issue from a web developer’s point of view.  If it had, the article’s comment string might have displayed less enthusiasm for the proposed new law — because it isn’t just Google, Microsoft, Amazon.com or Bank of America that will need to be concerned about it.  Every non-profit organization with a website, every small-scale entrepreneur who depends on the Internet and every Internet user will feel the impact of proposed Federal regulation of the transfer of online information — and it won’t necessarily be positive.

Applying such a “simple and universal” mechanism to the world of Internet browsing is an altogether different matter from merging a list of phone numbers with a Do Not Call list and dialing only the numbers that remain.  In this and upcoming editions of The Scout, we’ll look at a number of basic problems Congress will need to address in applying an opt-out mechanism to the online environment.

Problem #1: How would you define what it means to “track” someone?

Web analytics (also known as back-end metrics or SEO metrics) have become an important tool for website managers to determine what information is useful to site visitors, and what is not.  This information is used to improve the online experience for the benefit of producer and consumer alike. If legislation is ill-conceived, poorly worded, or vague, “tracking” could potentially prohibit this sort of aggregated data that web developers depend on to improve the content and functionality of a website.

Worse still, unless “tracking” is very strictly defined, all sorts of information that web site hosts use to build a relationship between customer and service provider, or to provide a useful online experience could potentially become illegal to retain.  For example, if someone orders a product or service online, and they have registered on the proposed Do Not Track list, does it become illegal to store in a database personal information they have knowingly supplied?  Would a website’s own opt-in mechanism supersede the Do Not Track list — or would it be the other way around?  This isn’t only a concern for big business.  Many non-profits rely on data obtained online for fundraising, membership development, and online delivery of member benefits. Restricted access to this information would inevitably result in diminished ability to fulfill the organization’s mission.

Coming next time:

Problem #2:  How do you define the entity that is not to be tracked?

For logos and line-art illustrations

BEST

• .ai (Adobe Illustrator) files
  Illustrator is the program most frequently used to create logos and line-art illustrations. .ai files are vector files, a format that allows virtually unlimited enlargement or reduction of your original art.
• .eps files
  Logo and illustration files in the .eps format are usually exported from Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, and can be opened or placed in these and other programs.

USABLE

• .tif files
• .psd files
• a CLEAN, previously printed image (the larger the better) to be scanned
• camera-ready positive artwork (the cleaner the better) to be scanned

The usability of all the above options depends on the size of the original and the size of the reproduction. With these, it is generally true that the greater the percentage of enlargement, the poorer the quality of the reproduction.

NOT RECOMMENDED / UNUSABLE

• digital files with the following extensions:
  .doc .gif .jpg .pdf .pm .ppt .qxd

Occasionally, logos and illustrations in the above file formats can be “doctored” for use in print. However, this almost always produces a noticeably inferior finished product.

For photos and continuous-tone illustrations

BEST

• the original photo or image, 3 x 5 or larger, to be scanned
• digital files with the following extensions:
  .eps .tif .psd

All digital photo files used for print reproduction should be within the following size ranges:

• 300 DPI (dots or pixels per inch) and at least 100% or greater of final printed size
• 72 DPI and at least 400% of the final printed size

USABLE

• .jpg
  .jpeg files can be used for print reproduction, if they conform to the sizes given above. However, .jpeg files have been compressed, which can adversely affect the quality of the image. Converting .jpg files to a print-friendly format can cost time and money.

NOT RECOMMENDED / UNUSABLE

• photos printed on anything other than photo paper
• any file with the following extensions:
  .doc .gif .pdf .pm .ppt .qxd

As with logos, photos in the above file formats can be “doctored” for use in print, but usually with very poor results.

Next Year’s News currently supports the following software programs

• Adobe Acrobat
• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe Photoshop
• Quark Xpress
• Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint)

Next Year’s News also supports a variety of software for multimedia development,
including Digidesign, Adobe and Macromedia products.

For a few days, it looked as though the rollout of the absurdly bland new Gap ID might actually have been a publicity stunt to generate a tidal wave of rebranding ideas from hip, social-media-savvy shoppers.

But, not content to live merely with the embarrassment of the creative gaff, Gap’s leadership disgraced themselves further by backpedaling on the proposed “crowdsourced” solution to the corporate image makeover.

So after a barrage of online criticism over the new logo, followed by a barrage of online criticism over trying to get a new logo for free, Gap now claims the crowd has spoken: the old logo must stay.

This, however, is not a triumph of tradition — it is an embarrassing failure of process.

A major corporate identity change should be driven by a need to realign an organization’s identity with the vision its leaders hold for their future.

It should be grounded in diligent research, and engage key brand stakeholders in the process along the way.

It should be vetted with the appropriate audiences, and introduced in a confident, bold way.

If Gap’s leadership believed (and, importantly, had market research that verified) the old logo was not consistent with their product line, to paint the company into this marketing corner was the worst possible move they could have made.

This lesson in how NOT to undertake a branding makeover would be painfully humiliating for any high-profile company, whether it sells cola, car parts, or clothing.

But the Gap doesn’t just sell clothing — their ACTUAL product is STYLE.

So what does it mean when the Gap misses the mark this badly on the development and introduction of the company’s most essential style statement?

It means this style merchant is woefully out of touch with the very thing they are selling.

And that is a much greater embarrassment to the Gap than the logo they so hastily abandoned.

For nearly fifteen years, New Orleans had been our second city, the adopted home of our closest friends and a destination for us at least once every year. During his extended stay in the Big Easy, Dwight had decided it was finally time to make “Nola” our home.

But days before his departure, a storm was gathering in the gulf that would change everyone’s plans.

This past week, Nola began haunting me again. Like a proper ghost, she didn’t make herself obvious. It began with obsessively playing a Bix Beiderbecke album, Dixieland accompanying me to work, the grocery, the park… then street musicians echoed her voice at an art fair, and suddenly, I saw her around every corner.

Of course, it was a news story about the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina that outed her. As soon as I heard it, I knew what had been following me. And, as every artist knows, the only way to deal with a ghost is to create something from it.

Five years after Katrina, one friend has died, the other has moved… and, just like the song, I miss New Orleans. But if I open my eyes, I see her spirit everywhere around me — even here in Toledo, Ohio.

Posted here today is a booklet that shares the spirit of Nola, captured five years after Katrina, a thousand miles away. I share it with the hope that it might open your eyes to her spirit where you are, too.

E-mail attachments are files sent along with a text-based e-mail message. An attachment can be any kind of file at all, including formatted word-processed documents, spreadsheets, databases, graphics, and even software.

The incredibly rapid rate of data transfer we’ve come to expect from e-mail is achieved by breaking down the data in each message into smaller pieces of data called “packets.” These packets do not transmit together as a message. Each packet finds its way independently, by what is literally “the path of least resistance” through a worldwide network of routers, to arrive at their destination server address. The e-mail you send to colleagues in an adjoining office could travel halfway around the world before arriving at their desktops!

Attachments are transmitted by this same method. Every packet of data carries the address (or, IP number) of the sender and the recipient, allowing your e-mail software to reassemble the packets into the same form in which they were sent.

What this packet-based transfer method gains in speed, it sacrifices in capacity. This process of breaking down and reassembling packets of information is poorly suited to “push” large amounts of data, for two reasons:

Integrity

The more broken-down a file must be to transfer, the more likely it is to be corrupted when re-assembled.

Efficiency

The more packets an e-mail server has to process, the slower it performs. Efficiency can become a particular problem when several large data files hit a server simultaneously.

For these reasons, files larger than two megabytes should not be sent via e-mail. Fortunately, there is an alternative to e-mailing large data files: an FTP client, or File Transfer Protocol application. There are a number of ways of accommodating FTP transfer between two points; in the next update of The Scout, we’ll provide details on the methods most commonly used today.