QR Codes have arrived!

Our QRazystuff.com clothing sales have started to rocket, as tech savvy youth get to grips with QR Codes and Social Media.  Wearing your Facebook profile and expanding your Friend network whilst out and about has to be the coolest ‘must have’ fashion accessory out there at the moment.

Our mission from day one has been to create consumer awareness of QR Codes through their use in mainstream advertising, in the hope that as consumers understand QR tech, they will join the QR revolution and wear their Codes with pride.  This has started to become a reality in the UK over the past couple of months, as brands rush to bring their offline advertising to life with QR Codes.

Outside of Japan, the UK seems to be leading the way in terms of QR Code use in advertising.  We’re sure we’ll be corrected for that statement, but we are, without doubt, witnessing an explosion in use of these amazing bar codes in the UK.

A typical London newspaper now has an abundance of ads with QR Codes on them each day.  Yes, there are problems with some of these ads in terms of content and code image reproduction, but seeing so many in the wild has brought a feeling of pride to our team members.  We have been advocating the use of QR Codes to mainstream advertisers and their agencies for over a year now, all of which have been bold over by their potential.

It’s a channel that will continue to grow and mature as time goes by – certainly until we uncover the next technology that has such widespread appeal to out of home advertisers.

This week has been a particularly great one for QR Codes in the UK, with London’s two main free newspapers quite literally packed with ads displaying QR Codes – check out the slideshow below to catch a glimpse of just some of them.

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We’d love to hear from you if you have any comments about these ads.  Get interactive with them and drop us your comments in this post.  We’re sure the advertisers themselves would appreciate some real consumer feedback, so don’t hold back – post your comment… good or bad!

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QR Codes Go Wild at MediaPro 2010

We’ve just returned from two days at this year’s MediaPro event in London – and what a wild event it was this year!  We were lucky to be invited along to exhibit as a partner of Ogilvy Digital Labs, as their QR Code specialists.  What a surprise it was, to be greeted by a mass of QR Codes on display at the exhibition.  As we walked into the event proudly wearing our QRazystuff Hoodies, we were delighted to see a number of other exhibitors displaying QR Codes on their stands.

QR Codes were the talking point of the exhibition and the QRazystuff team were inundated with enquiries from some of the UK’s top marketers.  We just loved the comments people made once we explained what they could do with QR Codes..  “Wow, that’s amazing”, “So Cool” & “Incredible” were just some of the feedback we received.

For posterity we snapped a few pics of the QR Codes on display.

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With the exception of our ultra cool clothing, the best use of a QR Code at the show probably has to go to a Xerox company, XMPie.  They organised a QR Code hunt around the exhibition, with 13 different codes for people to locate and scan.  These codes appeared everywhere, from posters, to the back of a T-Shirt adorned by one of their members of staff.  The mobile content behind the code was in itself innovative, in that once you registered after the 1st scan, you were encouraged to answer additional questions to gain bonus points (a clear data collection technique)..  The prize on offer for the person with the highest points total after the 2 days, was an iPad!  Bear in mind, the QRazystuff team have been debating about who would be the first iPad owner in the company for sometime now.  This prize just seemed like easy pickings for us avid QR Code snappers.  We set off with multiple phones in hand and scanned every poster, t-shirt and flyer we could find.  Our points were racking up at an incredible speed, we surely had to win?

Whilst manning the stand during Day two of the show, we were approached by a member of the XMPie team, who after introducing himself, told us that we had somehow amounted more points than they thought possible.  Had we broken the system?  Had we deliberately cheated in some way?  No, the answer soon became clear that we had found a flaw in the XMPie system!  Now considering we had managed to exceed the maximum points total, that iPad just had to be ours.  We started surfing for our iPad accessories..  A nice carry case, in fact two carry cases, one for the MD and one for Mrs QRazystuff.  Then came that dreaded Tweet from XMPie..  “Unfortunately you got popped at the post for the iPad!   Sorry.”   Not one for sour grapes, but we were left feeling a little disappointed.. Never mind, as Mrs QRazystuff said on our return “it was only a 32gb iPad and didn’t even come with 3G”.

On the upside, the mass of QR Codes on display at MediaPro this year proved the UK advertising industry has at long last woken up to how amazing these Codes really are.

One of London’s leading marketing agencies, MRM London, last week modernised their London headquarters reception with a wall of QR codes – each one dedicated to a different client and each one linking through to some work MRM had produced for them.  A simple idea to implement but an great way of adding a bit of interaction to an otherwise flat space.

We have been to meet many of the UK’s top marketing agencies and have been surprised at the lack of awareness these codes have in the world of advertising.  This all looks like it’s going to change in 2011 and we will be there at the forefront of this industry educating advertisers and their agencies about these amazing Codes.

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Labrinth Goes Wild with Urban QR Code Campaign

Following our “Building a Music Brand with QR Codes” post, we have continued to track the incredible success of the UK’s latest music sensation, Labrinth.  If you haven’t heard of Labrinth yet, you certainly will do.  He has raced into the UK charts with his single release ‘Let the Sun Shine’ , currently occupying No. 2 spot in the UK  iTunes download chart.  He’s destined to top the charts within the next week, as the single, which was officially released at the weekend gets more play time on the UK’s radio stations.

Labrinth originally came to our attention, having come across the pre-launch social media campaign, devised by London based Digital Marketing agency, Punktilio.  The campaign stood out, as it centred around the use of QR Codes in the creation of the Labrinth brand and the use of QR Codes across the social media platforms like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube & Twitter.  As an aside, we reported that at the beginning of September, Labrinth had attracted 316,413 channel views on his YouTube site – this figure has now rocketed to a staggering 1,293,800, proving the awesome power of Social Media in today’s modern world of marketing a musician’s brand.

The advertising campaign for Labrinth’s single hit the streets of London at the weekend, with a massive urban ad campaign using QR Codes once again.  All across London, we saw Labrinth posters featuring QR Codes, which resolved to a specific page that offered free downloads from the Labrinth web site..  They appeared in every conceivable place from pedestrian crossings to shop windows.

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This form of urban advertising is a radical move for the UK music industry, but one that fits perfectly with the Labrinth brand and also with his already massive fan base.  It’s widely recognised that there is a natural fit with the youth market and their use of Mobile technology, which adds significant weight to the Love Affair between Music and QR Codes.

It was also great to see Labrinth using QR Codes as a response mechanism on his official poster advertising as well.  If you look closely enough, you’ll see a QR Code (with instructions) on the bottom left hand corner of this poster (Click image to enlarge).

QRazystuff.com is really excited about this brave foray into the use of Mobile Bar Codes by the music industry.  There are significant opportunities for the world’s music industry to embrace the youth market through their communications channel of choice ‘Mobile’ .  QR Codes, and perhaps more importantly update-able QR Tags can deliver new and exciting means of brands engaging with their fans via the Mobile channel.

Labrinth is not only known as a leading Music producer and solo artist, but has also made the headlines recently, as one of the coolest fashion icons in the music industry.  He recently appeared at London Fashion Week and has been quoted as “implementing uniqueness into his day to day wear”.  The ‘uniqueness’ comment is also reflected in his management’s approach to advertising as well.

If Labrinth’s management team wished to extend the use of QR Codes and fashion, we’ll be waiting by the phone for that merchandising deal!  We’ve been quoted before in our Blog promoting the idea of musicians using QR Tagged clothing or other merchandise to not only promote a unique style of merchandising, but also providing a means of promoting targeted messaging to a loyal fan base. Wait…. is that the phone ringing?

Meantime, “Let the Sun Shine”…

P.S  When Labrinth’s management team want to get in touch, full contact details are on our web site

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QRazyGames with our QR Tags

We could really do with some creative input from anyone reading this post…  One of the fun ways in which QR Codes have been used in the wild is as part of Scavenger/Treasure hunts, but there’s so much more we can do with a QRazystuff Tag.

As you can change the content of a QRazystuff Tag, you can create all manner of different and fun games or social interactions.

The QR Tag below can be updated from the QRazyClub members area of the QRazystuff.com web site, with whatever URL or message you want.  Not only that, but as you make the change on the web site, the code updates instantaneously.

As an experiment, we’ll be changing the content of this Tag daily for the next few days.  The same Tag is posted on our Facebook & MySpace pages, as well as being distributed around Twitter, so we’re hoping for quite a bit of social interaction and hopefully some QRazyGame ideas we can develop for our QRazyClub members.

If this experiment is successful, we’ll post some of the ideas on the Blog.

Feel free to post your ideas within the comments on this blog post, put them on the QRazystuff Facebook page or drop us a Tweet!

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QRazystuff.com Press Release

Online Fashion Store Launches with Wearable Social Media

Imagine pulling out your Mobile and using it as a scanner to download videos, pictures, the latest news story or even someone’s social media status. Well, welcome to a truly digital world, because we’re already there.

Combining this vision with fashion has lead to the launch of the UK’s first QR Code online clothing retailer – QRazystuff.com.  This high tech fashion is about to hit the streets of the UK in the form of personalised t-shirts and hoodies that interact with your mobile phone.

QRazystuff.com today launched its online shop, selling their very latest fashion range, which contain personalised QR Tags (2d barcodes), which when scanned by a mobile phone will launch the owners choice of online media on the viewers mobile phone.

The technology behind the range works with a host of mobile phone bar code apps, with each QRazystuff T-Shirt or Hoodie being unique to its owner.  A simple scan of the QR Tag will launch the phone’s web browser, directing the viewer to a web site, social media site or text based message of the owner’s choice.  What’s more, the owner can change the destination of their tag whenever they want via the QRazystuff.com web site.

The QRazystuff.com web site allows customers to add a strap-line to the clothing as well.  At the time of launch, QRazystuff will be offering some neat strapline designs as well as allowing the customer to write a witty strapline text of their own.

The possibilities for using these wearable tags are endless and pretty much down to the imagination of the owner.  As the content of the Tag can be changed, your clothing can even reflect your mood.  Members simply access the QRazystuff web site and update the content of their tag online, so one day the Tag might direct to your Facebook profile and the next to a YouTube video or picture you want to share with the world.

QRazystuff.com is the brainchild of UK based entrepreneurs, Martin Rides & Grant Bloomfield, who told us “having seen the explosion of these bar-codes in Japan over recent years and also seeing increased use of them in the US, we saw an opportunity to popularise them in fashion.  They are different and you certainly get noticed when out and about.  It’s also a fun way of displaying your personality or your online presence with the world.  We’re developing the web site, so that members of the QRazyClub can update their tag content whenever they like and also keep a track of how many times their tag has been scanned.  Our plans for the club, whilst under wraps at the moment include; QRazyClub mash ups and some cool real-life gaming ideas.”

There’s something quite appealing about this youth fashion..  The concept of owning your own Tag and having control over its content has the potential to explode in today’s tech savvy youth market.  The company has some grand plans for the coming months, with some high profile activity in the music industry as well as venturing into high street retail market. It is certainly one to watch!

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About QRazystuff Limited

QRazystuff is UK based start up internet clothing retailer working in the mobile phone technology sector. QRazystuff produces a range of personalised clothing, which interact with mobile bar code reader applications on mobile platforms such as; iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile amongst others.  QRazystuff products use 2d bar codes known as Quick Response Codes (QR Codes) at the heart of the technology.  These bar codes were developed by Denso Wave in the mid 1990’s for car part tracking within the Toyota car manufacturing operations.  They have since been used in wide scale advertising by the likes of Google, Pepsi UK and Nike.  QRazystuff.com has been designed using Cloud based computing technologies at its core and offers a variety of unique services to its members, including the ability to change the content & ultimate web destination of the owners Tag and also monitor scan metrics via an online membership dashboard.

Reader Download

To get a QR Code reader send a SMS (text message) containing i-nigma to: +44 7797 882325 and you will be sent the link to the software.  Or Visit http://www.mobile-barcodes.com/qr-code-software/

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QRazystuff.com Launches Today!

Yes, it’s finally arrived!  9 months of research, tests, web site development,  integration of affiliate’s systems and a whole host more testing and we now have the world’s first (probably) QR Tag merchandise shop.

QRazystuff.com will be officially launched at the Music4Life festival in our home town in Sudbury, Suffolk on Saturday 7th August 2010.  It’s going to be an amazing day, that can only likened to the birth of your first child….

A passionate meeting between the two QRazystuff partners, resulted in 9 months of up’s and down’s and 2 days of a difficult labour (we’ll explain more another day)..  Our new born, strangely named “QRazystuff.com“, has a bright future with a team of loving supporters and a fan club and following running into many thousands.  Just incredible how Social Media has helped develop what was a crazy idea all those months ago.

We’ve taken a short video from the web site, so you can see what our new born has in store for you:

We’ll be opening the doors to the QRazyClub with FREE membership for the first 5,000 VIP members, so don’t waste any time and sign up today to help support QRazystuff.com.  Members of the club will join the QRazystuff family and as always get priority access to the club as it grows over time – no only in numbers but with some new and exciting new features.

Our recent London QR Mash up was something we’d like to repeat around the globe, but perhaps with some fun interactive gaming thrown in.  If you’re interested in helping spread the QRazystuff brand and want some support from the team, drop us a Tweet @QRazystuff or leave a message on the Facebook Fan Page

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Launch date looming…

Well, after what seems like an eternity, we can finally see light at the end of the tunnel…  The past few months have been extremely busy ones, working tirelessly with creating the QRazystuff brand and selling QR Codes to the masses.  Earlier in the week, we had a status meeting with the web designers and finalised a launch date for QRazystuff.com.

Now the fun really begins, between now and the end of July 2010 (launch date), we will be increasing our promotional activity in the advertising world as well as sorting out the finishing touches to the end to end order process.  At this point, I think it is fair to say, that we did not fully understand how complex it is to… create a personalised QR Tag, add some personalised detail to a garment, create the artwork, manage the print, fulfilment & postage processes, which are just some of the component parts of producing, what will be an amazing piece of fashion!  By the way, if anyone is considering doing something similar in the future, we will be writing a book about the journey.

To more exciting things and in particular what we have lined up over the next month or so..  Next week we will be at Ogilvy (London) for their Mobile Lab Day #MobLab, where we will continue our partnership with the world’s largest advertising group in promoting these amazing bar codes to the world of advertising.  Ogilvy really are pioneers in advertising and their Lab’s which are scattered around the globe are truly innovative.  A focus point for staff and customers to engage first hand with new and exciting developments in technology, which all relate to advertising.  Our presence adds not only a serious message about the use of 2d barcodes in mobile marketing, but also provides a light hearted addition to the exhibition.  People just love, grabbing their mobile phone and scanning our Tags..  Many may not even be aware of a QR Code, so when they start to engage with the ideas, you can see their imagination going into overdrive..

Another market we are working on developing is in the world of Music. It’s all pretty logical really, Music over the years has had a massive impact on people’s lives, from what they wear to who they are.  We’ve been talking to a number of big players in this market over recent months and these highly imaginative people ‘get’ the role that QR Tags can play in the music world…  Whilst we have a way to go before we can really sell in a strong proposition for the QRazystuff clothing brand, we are confident that we’ll have a unique proposition that Record Companies, Producers, Promoter’s & Artists alike will love (more to follow another day).

Our first foray into this market is quite literally the week after we launch..  We’re fortunate enough to have a local Music Festival taking place right on our door-step on 7th August.  MusicforLife 2010 is the precursor to what will be a major UK Festival in 2011.  This Charity event is being sponsored by QRazystuff Ltd, with all proceeds going to the Eden Rose Coppice charity.  The charity supports those affected by Cancer, by providing cancer patients, their families, volunteers, caregivers and nurses an opportunity to escape, reflect and connect with nature.  This year’s festival will certainly be a very exciting one for the QRazystuff team, as we’ll be manning our first festival tent, not only displaying our clothing, but also providing access to customers to purchase their own Tagged clothing!

We’ve also produced some promotional T-Shirts for this year’s event, with any resale proceeds being passed onto the Charity of course.

For next year’s festival market, we have some ground breaking plans for how we can retail our products..  again more to follow another day.

There’s a lot more to tell about the future plans of QRazystuff, but I’m afraid they will have to stay under-wraps for now. ..

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QRazystuff Brand Taking Shape

You wouldn’t believe the time and effort that’s gone into developing the QRazystuff brand identity..  Literally weeks of design reviews, focus group meetings, with tweaks here and there along the way.

With the web site design well underway, our brand has really started to come to life.  It’s clean, funky and really rather cool.  We’ve played on a social media theme, whilst concentrating the look and feel of the brand in line with our target audience.    The web site itself continues with this theme, focussing on a clean and stylish look.  The brand logo also consists of a QR Code (of course), which we have ensured is readable by your mobile device.  Go on give it a go – scan the image below and see where it takes you…

We also now have our first batch of QRazystuff stickers, which will be shipped free of charge with every order.  We’ll also be using them as part of our urban ad campaign!  Keep your eye out for a QRazystuff sticker – they’ll be appearing everywhere!

Our business cards are truly stunning..  On the reverse of each card is a personalised QR Code, which when read by your smartphone will automate a phone call straight to one of the QRazystuff team.  That’s a call to action, we’re sure will be appearing on business cards around the world!

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QRazystuff YouTube Channel

Following many weeks of work, we’re delighted to announce the launch of the QRazystuff YouTube channel.  Our launch video has been kindly put together with the help of our creative partners at NowHouse.tv who have helped us put toegther our first corporate video.  The channel’s first video upload has been developed to promote the use of QR Codes in mainstream advertising.  Our ice breaker video has already been rolled out to a number of advertising agencies and big brand clients over recent weeks and has been well received by all that have viewed it as part of our corporate presentations.

Our presentations are really creating a buzz in the ad world.  We’ve seen our audiences really engage with the idea, when we let them ‘imagine’ what uses they can come up for using QR Codes..  You can see the creatives, letting their imagination go, instantly generating ideas for how they could use QR Codes in their creative executions.  Comments like, “we can automate charity donations using QR Codes” and “what about recipe ideas in supermarkets” have come from recent brainstorming sessions.  The ideas just keep coming and with a solid solution such as we are developing, we’re confident we’ll be seeing these “funny matrixy kind of things” appearing more and more in day-to-day life.

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The QRazystuff Range

We’ve been busy doing our market research and producing a variety of product designs for the QRazystuff personalised clothing range.  We’re using some cutting edge print technology to produce our T-Shirts and Hoodies, which allows us to produce large quantities of personalised clothing on demand.  The quality of the test prints we have achieved with our print partners has been outstandingly good.  We have produced clean, crisp images and beautifully vibrant colours for the various strap-lines we are printing.

Bear in mind, no one print is the same as another – they are all individual prints, personalised to the individual.

The clothing range will not only be aligned to the Social Media Network of your choice (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube etc), but can also feature codes that contain a simple text based message or automated telephone call!  Now that’s going to get you thinking…

Here are just some of the designs we will be launching with.

If you’d like to get involved in spreading the QRazystuff message, we have some limited edition prints to give away.  Join us on Facebook to get involved.

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