Hear what Ace Group’s Val DiGiacinto Has to Say About the Business Opportunity

I've been following the discussion about QR codes from a variety of sources, including the LinkedIn Group 2D Codes for Global Media, WhatTheyThink articles by Barb Pellow and others, and the many tweets and LinkedIn messages from John Foley at interlinkONE, whose company offers a service called QReate & Track. But what's really happening in the U.S. relative to QR Codes? Is it really the next big thing? After viewing a recent WhatTheyThink video interview with Val DiGiacinto, Vice President of Sales/Partner of the ACE Group in New York City on the topic, I checked in with him to get his real-world perspective on the opportunities QR Codes provide for print service providers, their customers and the printing industry and marketers at large.

A QR Code is a two-dimensional bar code originally created for Toyota's use in parts inventory management in 1964 by Denso-Wave. Codes were designed to have their contents decoded quickly, thus the origination of QR or Quick Response. Denso-Wave made QR Code technology available as an open platform/open architecture solution rather than maintaining it as proprietary. Today, QR Codes are increasingly targeted at mobile users who can snap an image of the code and have a planned action executed, such as bringing up a mobile-friendly web site (which could be a personalized URL), sending an SMS message, or getting product information or store hours. DiGiacinto and the ACE Group consider themselves a leading edge practitioner in the field of QR Codes. This interview certainly supports that position. Really cool stuff...