Tribeca Film Festival is employing QR codes to let filmmakers reach more individual consumers and give festival attendees access to movie trailers and special videos from their mobile devices.

Scanbuy Inc. is powering the initiative. The codes are placed throughout the festival, which takes place in New York City through May 1, including on guides.

“The festival has a lot of content and information that it wants to share with attendees both before and during the event,” said Mike Wehrs, CEO of Scanbuy, New York. “This gives them a great way to deliver that information while people are looking for more content on the go.

“The other thing that is a fundamental capability of Scanlife’s technology is to use codes to drive customer engagement,” he said. “Enabling feedback and interactivity through codes at a venue like this is aligned well with the audience that participates in this exciting event.”

Scanbuy is a global provider of mobile bar code solutions that use the camera phone to connect users with the digital world.

For the Tribeca Film Festival, users can scan the codes with the ScanLife application, as well as other industry standard 2D scanner apps, or by using Scanbuy’s Scan and Send function, where the codes can be snapped with a camera phone and sent by MMS to 43588.

This is the first time the bar code technology is being used at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Qualifying the content
The codes are mainly connecting users to a mobile version of the Tribeca Film Festival Web site, which provides schedules, maps to specific theaters and film details.

The filmmakers were also given codes, which they can use to promote on Facebook, Twitter and other networks.

“There is a world of digital content that the festival makes available, and this technology helps deliver that really effectively,” Mr. Wehrs said. “In one click, they can send updated information on schedules, additional images and even video right to the mobile device.”

During comprehensive events such as the Tribeca Film Festival, users can filter information they find relevant through the use of bar code technology.
Scanbuy noted other major events where mobile bar codes were used, including the 2011 New York Auto Show and SXSW.

“Customer initiated interaction and targeted information when an attendee wants it are contributing factors to people enjoying the event to its fullest,” Mr. Wehrs said. “Scanlife’s Code technology is ideally suited to help address this challenge and it enables the users of the system to enhance the awareness of the overall event through the use of the social networking features that Scanlife provides.”

Final Take
Mackenzie Allison is associate reporter on Mobile Commerce Daily