QR Codes Hit the Roof

A good marketer never misses an opportunity to spread the word, right? Well, a  public relations consulting firm in Austin, Texas, Phillips & Company, has found a way to place ads in a spot where lots of people are traveling every day: Google Maps and Google Earth.

San Francisco Business Times reports that Phillips (which is interested in the ultimate in outdoor marketing — the "space economy") is now able to place extremely large QR codes on the tops of buildings that will be photographed by the satellites that feed Google Maps and Google Earth its images and read on computers as an image. It's working with another local business, mobile marketing firm 44Doors, as the Austin Statesman reports:

For the service, which is called Blue Marble, Phillips' fee starts at $8,500, with a recurring $200 support fee. To install the codes, (Rich) Phillips said his company has a method of "physically engineering" a QR code onto a rooftop "to ensure it's permanent or temporary." He declined to get into specifics on the exact method. After a customer scans the code, 44Doors essentially handles the rest. The Austin mobile marketing company designs a variety of content — such as videos, coupons and mobile websites — where QR codes can send consumers.

Phillips says “that a company, such as a big box retailer with lots of roof space, which has one installed, will be rephotographed by Google within three months,” the Business Times reports. “The QR code will be digested by Google’s mapping systems and will cause a logo of that company to appear when someone looks at their building’s images.”