Harriet in her post Gatwick Airport's giant barcodes talks about some huge posters featuring barcodes that are used in the airport in order to cover construction walls and enable people to learn what's going on behind these walls. Passengers who have smartphones and are using the stickybits application will be able to scan the barcode and watch a video about the airport improvement program.
And for those of you that don't have a smartphone, or didn't have the time to download the application, this is what the airport video looks like:
Barcode campaigns seem to be more and more popular in airports. As the Testing a Bar Code Technology for Smartphones NYT article informs us, in Denver International Airport, the Colorado FirstBank is offering a free download of an e-book to the passengers who scan the barcode on the posters. Also in Clear Channel Airports, a large outdoor company, airline passengers will be able to download free crosswords and Sudoku games, after
scanning a barcode. As the article suggests, barcode campaigns bring interactivity to public places and enhance consumer's participation, but consumer familiarity is not yet established and there are not a lot of users with phones equipped with scanners. In my opinion, barcode campaigns have a lot of potential because they are a great way to initiate a two-way communication with the consumer. They also create a feeling of curiosity; you just want to know what is behind the barcode.On the other hand, I feel like this technology, as all new technologies, is being used by many brands just because it is something new. Barcode campaigns can be a great tactic but there has to be a logic behind them.It is amazing when you think what ads used to look like 30 years ago and what they look like now. Even more amazing is to try and imagine what they will look like in 30 years from now. In the passing of time, what changed advertising and the media world in general is the Internet. Marshall McLuhan, a famous media theorist, supported that "the medium is the message," meaning that the content isn't as important as the medium, and that the media, especially the new ones, have the power to change the scale, pattern and pace of our society. The Internet has certainly reshaped many aspects of our society. As Marshall McLuhan had predicted the electric media brought a universality of consciousness and made people reunite into one big tribe, the "global village." And what other medium, if not the Internet, can be characterized as a "global village?" The Web has not only in a way swallowed all other media but has also connected people in a different level.
Another famous McLuhan theory is his two media categories. According to his book Understanding Media, media can be divided into "hot," which are high definition, low involvement media, and into "cool," which are low definition, high involvement media. So in which category would McLuhan place the Internet? As Nick Carr, business writer, says in his article McLuhan would blow hot and cool about today's internet, the internet doesn't really fit into these two categories. Internet is high definition but also high involvement. In my opinion, the fact that the Internet has more or less swallowed all other media, by allowing us the watch TV, listen to the radio, read books, and play games, makes it hard to name it a hot or cool medium. Maybe even McLuhan would reconsider his categories, if he lived nowadays.
It is time to start our landing process, so I would like to thank you one more time for flying with us. I hope to see you again in one of our flights really soon!
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