Barcode celebrates its 50th birthday this year. I was first exposed to barcode my agency got a client in Hyderbad who was trying to launch barcode machines in India. Way back in 1990. At that time the effort was not at selling it to retailers and FMCG companies as a way of identifying packs, but to industrial enterprises as a way of tagging assets. It was slow going indeed.
A young copywriter working at the agency got inspired by the barcode in a very different way. When he was tasked to create an ad for Titan’s ‘World Thinnest Watch’ at the agency he moved to, he thought of barcodes. And his encounter with the barcoding machine in Hyderabad. What if one of the lines [12 or more lines] is replaced with a watch. Unfortunately for him, his creative director bombed the idea and it never got presented to the client. But fate had hope for barcodes. The regional creative director of the agency who had come down from Singapore a few weeks later wanted the young creative talent to pull out what they thought were ‘good’ but ‘rejected’ work. This ad was pulled out of the bottom shelf, the RCD loved it and green lit it for presentation to the client. The Barcode ad went on to run on print and TV; it established Titan’s new thin watch range called ‘Slim’ and was even named the campaign of the year at award shows.
From being a rarity seen in watch ads, today barcodes are everywhere in India. Even your neighbourhood kirana has a barcode reader. Inventory and prices are embeded in the barcode. Most FMCG packs have their own barcodes.
A report in the Wall Street Journal [19 August 2024] is sounding the death knell for barcodes. The QR code is going to replace the barcode. Why?
Barcodes also known as UPC, universal product codes, have very limited information carrying capacity. In contrast QR codes are a lot more capable. QR codes too have had an interesting journey in India. When they came they were a curio item. I remember in 2003, including a QR code in a car’s print advertisement, occupying valuable real estate in a newspaper like Economic Times. Readers who scanned the QR code were taken to the car’s website where they could watch a demo video and more. Unfortunately even a very small fraction of ET readers did not bother to scan the QR code [this could be tracked easily]. Finally, we decided not to include QR codes in the print ads.
But that was then. With the growth of smartphones and mobile internet, QR codes are everywhere. UPI has made it a ubiquitous part of our daily lives. An ad for a hospitality brand recently ran an ad with a QR code up front and when asked the CMO confirmed that almost 3% of the readers of the newspaper had scanned the QR code to decode the ad message. That is a monumental shift in the acceptance of QR codes.
Compared to barcodes, QR codes can contain a lot more information. Brands like L’Oreal have experimented with QR codes on their hair colour packs that help consumers do a virtual try-on of different colours. Food brands have used QR codes to suggest recipe options.
Manufacturers in the western world are now working with retailers to roll out QR codes and dropping barcodes from their packs. From a retailer’s perspective a QR code can offer a lot more than just SKU [stock keeping unit] information and price. QR codes can also embed information about coupons, recalls, batch numbers and more. Several companies are running experiments with retailers to test the viability of QR codes, given the fact that they will need a different set of scanners [all of us use them during our air travel and know how versatile QR codes are].
In the US most large retailers just scan the barcodes that are on the packs of FMCG brands. In India many small and large retailers affix their own barcodes as a separate sticker. I wonder if that practice will go away or will continue even if QR codes are provided on packs.
All said it will be an interesting transition, from simple barcodes to more complex QR codes at retail check outs. And who knows there may be a young copywriter somewhere thinking of a clever way of using in in a watch or a car ad.
Appeared originally in Economic Times 17 Sept 2024