Ricoh has launched Clickable Paper in South Africa which can provide immediate one-touch access to up to six different online resources such as video or multimedia, Web sites, e-commerce portals and social networks in a move likely set to replace QR Codes.
According to Vaughan Patterson, sales manager for the production printing business group at Ricoh SA. “You simply point your smartphone or tablet camera at a clickable page and the app for iOS and Android takes a picture that references back to the cloud where the content owner makes whatever content they want available via the six or fewer links.”
Unlike QR codes, Clickable Paper will be used to reference images such as logos on clothing, in a book, magazine, newspaper or any other printed material to specific content instead of a general Web page that requires further interaction.
The firm says the tech was piloted in Europe and is field-tested and proven and allows almost boundless applications. People can scan an advert in a newspaper, collect a digital coupon and get their discount for a product when they buy it in store. Or they can simply scan the cover of a book and access interactive content instead of using a bundled CD or DVD.
The technology works by storing the clickable page in the Ricoh cloud and with the imminent release of an authoring tool content owners can create and change content as they wish, over any period of time, while the clickable image remains the same, which is another key difference between Clickable Paper and QR codes. There is no need to issue a new image as is the case with QR codes.
Clickable Paper doesn’t require visible marks of any kind on printed materials, so there is no need to design around a barcode that can detract from a document’s appearance which is good for commercial print, publishing and luxury goods manufacturing across a range of applications that include books, newspapers and magazines.
UK’s commercial printer Barnwell Print incorporated the tech into a 4 000 run of a 274-page book enabling readers to watch a video about fishing. Barnwell Print also used the technology successfully in an advert for Norwich Theatre Royal in a monthly town magazine with a circulation of 40 000 to encourage readers to order theatre tickets online.
“When we saw Clickable Paper, we immediately recognised its enormous potential,” says Julian Barnwell, MD and co-owner of Barnwell Print. “Clickable Paper enables publications to be used as a portal to direct readers to all kinds of extra information or entertainment. It brings printed publications into the world of interactive, multi-channel communications and offers the real-time tracking of reader response that has heretofore been difficult to achieve with a printed publication.’’
