The Lunch Pail: A Digital Marketing Blog

Which technology does Knotice recommend? The answer here gets only slightly clearer. In most cases Knotice recommends Microsoft Tag, and here’s why – it’s all about the consumer.

The other considerations are mostly concerned with marketer/brand/business experiences. Microsoft Tag is a proprietary solution. On the upside this means a few more built-in bells and whistles. On the downside this means a few more restrictions, such as less freedom for customization than the more flexible QR solution, which tends to be embraced by developers and technologists who love the freedom to customize a solution.

Here’s an example. If a brand wants to adopt a single 2D code technology as its “enterprise” tagging solution for consumers to engage with the brand, important factors come into play. On one hand Microsoft Tag is ready to go. Out of the box there are more tools that enterprises like, though there’s still a way to go before it’s truly enterprise-ready. But, MS Tag is proprietary. Thus far, Microsoft hasn’t been willing or able to play ball and open the tag reader functionality up to developers. For instance, the enterprise would have difficultly embedding the tag reader within its branded app, a vital capability for making the tag scanning process a part of a well-branded experience. With QR-based technologies, we can make this happen.

In recent posts I’ve been accused of being a MS Tag apologist. Not so. It’s true that I see more benefit adopting MS Tag for majority of use cases, real or hypothetical. I encourage every marketer serious about adopting 2D codes as part of their interactive mix to: (A) List their own business objective, (B) Do the research on both technologies, and (C) Actively experiment with both. Whether the plan involves using QR codes or MS Tag it costs virtually nothing to begin creating codes/tags. Explore what works for you and your customers.

Here is a simple outline of some of the key aspects of comparing QR codes with Microsoft Tag. This is a straightforward way of breaking down the attributes, and marketers can evaluate on their own what consumer and brand/business considerations are important:

Read part one of Bryce’s commentary on 2D tags here