2D barcodes offer formidable opportunities for retailers looking for new ways to drive store traffic and connect with shoppers. At Global Shop, all of the retail industry’s leaders and innovators will come to share the latest solutions to enhance the retail experience. And we’ll be there too.

When: Feb 29 – Mar 2, 2012.

Where: Las Vegas, USA.

Let’s talk: If you’re going there and you’d like to meet us, come and meet us at booth 635.

2012 will be the year of the mobile barcode. To celebrate, we’ll be exhibiting at a series of high-profile events around the world. And with the ever increasing importance of mobile technologies, Mobile World Congress seems like just the right place to kick off the events season.

If you’re attending, we’ll be presenting a case study about mobilizing retail along with Ronalee Zarate-Bayani, Head of Digital Marketing, Yum Brands. For a more detailed description of the conference, click here.

Also, to discuss the latest mobile payment solution you can visit Scanbuy Payments at booth (C70) in Hall 2.1.

When: Feb 27 – Mar 1, 2012, from 16:00 to 17:30 local time.
Where: Barcelona, Spain.
Event description: Mobile World Congress is the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry where all leaders of mobile operators, device manufacturers, technology providers, vendors and content owners from across the world gather.

In 2011 we saw some pretty amazing campaigns. If you’re searching for inspiration, look no further.

Here’s our top 10:

Taco Bell and MTV teamed up to help promote this year’s MTV Video Music Awards. QR Codes were placed on all of Taco Bell’s “Big Box Remixed” packages and large cups and delivered a variety of exclusive VMA content to users. The campaign led to over 400 thousand scans in six weeks. Find out more.

Contestants had to find 5 Mercedes-Benz cars with QR Codes within designated areas in Singapore. The first to find all 5 won a pair of Grandstand tickets to the Singapore Night Race and a weekend test drive with Mercedes-Benz. An amazing call to action. Check out the video.

Victoria’s Secret saucy QR code campaign. In reality it was not implemented, but it generated a lot of buzz around the internet.  See more pics.

What do you do if you’re a small, unknown shoe brand with a marketing budget that’s unable to compete with the giants? Use street marketing. Simple and clever. Find out more.

Hennessy launched limited edition Cognac in individually numbered bottles with special artwork. The bottle and international press release included a designer QR Code that linked customers to a mobile site with more information. To date the micro site has been accessed 1.3m+ times, with over 600k+ of them via the QR Code. Learn more.

Frito Lay launched a brand new program to get people to use their products in a whole new way – by scanning the 1D barcode present on every bag! Smart and easy. Find out more.

Customer activation, integrated marketing and multichannel promotion are all the rage these days. Don’t hesitate to use these buzzwords. Perrier blended QR codes, voice recognition and mobile web to create a very effective campaign. Learn more.

Another example of a small enterprise that used QR codes to get great results. Users would scan the cows, receive points, and purchase fresh diary products. What a brilliant idea. Check out the video.

JC Penney used QR codes so customers could create and record a personal voice message and attach it to their gift. See more.

To help promote safe sex in Stockholm and increase awareness, Swedish Agency Ester created one of the most creative and clever campaigns we’ve seen using QR codes. Watch the video.

We have just released the latest ScanLife Mobile Barcode Trend Report for Q4 2011. This edition takes a closer look at the busiest quarter of the year for mobile barcodes and some year-end growth comparisons to 2010.

One of the report’s highlights shows the “hockey stick” growth of scans by quarter dating all the way back to Q1 2009. Last year saw a 300% increase compared to 2010. Looking at the chart below, its pretty amazing to see just how far mobile barcode scanning has come these past few years.

The holiday season proved to be another huge period for engaging new users as people are searching for product information and millions of new Smartphones were activated.

Other key takeaways from this report:

• Q4 2011 saw more scans than all of 2009 and 2010 combined
• Over 3,000,000 new ScanLife users were activated in Q4 2011

• Among marketers using the ScanLife platform, the Consumer Packaged Goods industry saw the most scans for the first time ever
• Half of our users report being 18-34, and 60% are male which is consistent with the previous report

A HUGE thank you to everyone to everyone who made these numbers possible!  This data is compiled from our platform users, app users, and other 3rd party apps/code generators.

You can download the full report here.