Tricky Dick, Spamazon, and 10 Other Media Failures of 2011

Now that just about everyone else is done publishing their annual feel-good "Best Of" lists, it's time for Dead Tree Edition to remind us what a crappy year we just stumbled through.  Here’s a look back at some of the media world’s unsung losers and overlooked failures of 2011:

Spamazon: Amazon, once known for its uncanny ability to send emails promoting just the right products to the right person (See An Amazon Approach to Selling Magazine Subscriptions), decided to enter the deal-of-the-day business. But it turns out the big web retailer is better at algorithms than maps: Several readers report being deluged with irrelevant offers, including ones for car washes, hair salons, and the like that are more than two hours from where they live. By the time Amazon realizes the damage it has done, I’ll bet millions of us customers will have relegated its missives to our spam folders.

Georgia: Forbes recently announced the launch of its 20th “local language edition”, Forbes Georgia. Yat's raht, them good ol’ boys in Jawjuh fahnly had to abandon WDCHYDIUN (We Don't Care How You Do It Up North) as a business strategy and realized they need someone to explain the ways of Wall Street and other Yankee business practices to them in their own language. (What? There’s a country called Georgia? Sheee-it, I thought Georgia rejoined the Union just a few years after the War Against Northern Aggression.)

When NOT To Use a QR Code

With all of the excitement about Quick Response codes among print people these days ("See, we're still relevant in the Internet age!"), it's easy to forget that they aren't right for every occasion.

A colleague in the magazine industry relates this recent incident: A customer submitted a print ad with a QR code, which my friend subjected to the Paranoid Production Manager's 3 Tests for QR Codes. (FYI, all good production managers are paranoid.):

1) Is a URL shown with the QR Code? That might not be necessary in countries like Japan where using QR codes is second nature. But in less advanced countries with more primitive phone systems and many people who don't know what to do with two-dimensional barcodes -- like, say, the United States -- not including a Web address will hurt response. Check.

2) Is the QR code readable? There are some real horror stories about promotions containing QR codes that weren't readable. Check.

3) Does the QR code take you to a web page that is relevant to the ad? Just because the code is readable doesn't mean it directs readers to the correct web page. Designer have been known to make mistakes. Check.

But then my colleague spotted a problem: The promotion was for the sale of a product that has to be shipped to the buyer, which means the buyer has to enter credit-card or PayPal data, email address, and mailing address. That's way more typing than most people want to do on the typical smartphone. The client agreed that it should remove the QR code from the ad.

Moral: Don't use QR codes if the landing page is not optimal for mobile devices.

Other articles about managing print projects include:

• 12 Telltale Signs That You Are A Printing Geek
• The Changing World of Print Buyers: An Interview with Margie Dana