In the age of technology, access to information comes as easily as a few strokes on the keyboard. The Internet has been a boon for many, providing them with countless hours of entertainment. It has also reduced people’s reliance on old, printed directories such as phone books. However, AT&T is keen to bring new life to phone books by introducing them to QR codes. The communications giant will be using the codes on their Real Yellow Pages phone books in North Carolina.
Technology, particularly that of the mobile variety, has long been considered the nemesis of print. With the advent of the Internet, newspaper and magazine publications experienced a drop in physical circulation which was only recovered when they established their presence online. As mobile marketing becomes ever more popular, the QR code is proving to be a successful mediator between the print and online realms. AT&T hopes that by using the code, more people will be drawn to the books.
This is not the first time the codes have appeared on phone books, however. Publishers of the Yellow Pages have used the codes back in 2008, when they first started appearing in the U.S. Those codes could be scanned with any barcode scanning application. This is not the case with AT&T’s codes.
The company is opting to use a proprietary QR code, one that can only be scanned by a specific application provided by AT&T. While some companies have had success with proprietary codes in the past, the vast majority opt to use all-access QR codes – more or less an industry standard.
