Enhancing Printed Prevention Messages

If you are not already employing QR (Quick Response) Codes in your traditional print prevention or teaching materials, you may want to consider this technology to increase traffic to your message.

QR Codes are those small, two-dimensional “look like a quilt” graphics seen in so many ads in magazines and on product labels. These are “quick response codes” that allow a consumer to quickly connect to “more information” about the product, services, or, essentially, “anything” one can access via the web. For example, a QR Code can link to a video, text message, blog, or web site. You can include a video clip (YouTube?) or picture/graphic (.gif, .jpg, .tiff, etc.) that illustrates, expands upon, or otherwise simply “enhances” your message. For example, it you create a flyer for a workshop on alcohol poisoning or blood-alcohol levels, you could include a QR Code that can link the consumer to the B4Udrink.com web site or any of a number of BAL calculators online where that consumer can learn more if n out calculate his or her own BAL. Educators can include links to extensive reading lists, book reviews, interesting if not controversial blog posts, or online calculators or search engines to augment lesson plans or otherwise bring “older” more sedentary pedagogical materials into the 21st century. Click--or better yet, scan with your smart phone--the QR Code in this post and see where it takes you :)

For prevention specialists on campus, include a QR Code on a one page flyer for faculty on how your health project or AOD program can enhance their course…or perhaps produce an audio enhanced PowerPoint outlining some “health-related” topic/issues that students can access from a course syllabus.

The beauty of QR Codes is they can be less than a square inch in size and therefore easily—and unobtrusively—inserted “anywhere” and thereby open up that printed item or e-document, because you can scan a QR Code from a monitor just as easily as from a printed page.

To learn more, visit http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/29449/How-to-Create-a-QR-Code-in-4-Quick-Steps.aspx

For a "free" QR Code generator for your IOS smart phone, search "Barcode+" in the App Store.