
Clickable Paper Simplifying marketing
The concept of marketing presents as many problems for marketers as it does solutions. People involved in marketing have numerous things to consider when conceiving a campaign. There is the need to make the campaign attractive and there is the need for it to be measurable. Each of these relies on different factors and requires different tools.
Questions which arise include whether it should be digital or analogue, whether it should be static or interactive, what can be included to elicit a response, what form the response should take, how accurately can the response be measured?
There is a new App available from Ricoh which can answer most of these questions and which can solve the dilemma of whether to go with a digital campaign or whether to stick to the more traditional paper-based marketing campaign. Clickable Paper combines the best of paper with the best of digital and interactive. It combines the design elements of static copy with the mobility of smartphones and tablets offering marketers the ideal all-round solution. The App has undergone extensive testing and customer trials in Europe and has now been launched here in South Africa.
So, what is Clickable Paper? Clickable paper is simply the creation of a visual point of reference which can be scanned using an iOS or Android Smartphone or Tablet and a free App from Ricoh. The App recognises the visual reference such as page or printed image on the page and links that back to up to six digital sites such as a website, a YouTube video, multimedia link or social network. Almost any digital content can be used as a link. In the same way, almost any visual item can be used as the reference point.
The use of Clickable Paper also gives creatives more freedom with their printed designs because they do not have to include any mandatory items such as barcodes or QR Codes. Both of these items generally interfere with the design process and limit the creativity of the design. With Clickable Paper, the logo as it appears on the App Store can be included, but it is not required. The whole page or portion of the page is the reference point. Not only that but with Clickable Paper, up to six links can be provided whereas a barcode or QR code has a single link associated with it. In addition, Clickable Paper provides full traceability because it logs every click-through from the App.
To view the capabilities of Clickable Paper use your Android or Apple smartphone to download the Clickable Paper App and then scan the image of the last cover of Nex Media on this page and start browsing the available links. If you would like to know how we can turn your advert in Nex Media into a Clickable Paper link contact us and we can show you. Nex Media is one of the first publications in South Africa to be using Clickable Paper.