Fishy QR codes and deep sea transparency

This past weekend, the Boston Globe ran a fantastic series of investigative articles on the fish business. It turns out that DNA testing organized by the Globe revealed nearly half of 183 fish samples collected at restaurants and supermarkets in the Boston area were not the species ordered.

As a fish lover and frequent restaurant patron, this is certainly stinky!

Fish misidentification is especially common at sushi restaurants the Globe found, partly because they use various names for the same fish. Testing showed that 32 area restaurants that serve sushi sold misnamed fish.

But there is hope in the form of QR codes!

A company called Trace and Trust, a network of fishermen, distributors, processors and restaurants, has organized a system that uses QR codes to track individual fish from the ocean to your plate.

What a fantastic use of QR codes in marketing!

Trace and Trust tells customers exactly who caught their seafood, as well as when, where, and how it got caught. The community believes this level of transparency results in the highest quality and freshest possible seafood you have ever seen.

The system delivers complete transparancy and is fun too.

Do you know who caught your seafood?

Here is a sample of a QR Code.

If you were sitting at a restaurant, enjoying a meal, you'd be able to scan the code and learn that Chris Brown landed your Summer Flounder on 10/20/2011 while fishing near Block Island. Captain Chris Brown’s vessel, the F/V Proud Mary, is docked in the harbor in Point Judith, Rhode Island. Wild Rhody shipped 45 pounds of this catch to Tastings Wine Bar and Bistro and 606 Congress.

There's even a photo of Chris with the fish that you're about to take a nice bite out of. How lovely.

What a fantastic example of real-time marketing at work!

Here are ten more examples of QR codes for real time marketing

Comments

[NickWAllen]

David, - over here in the UK www.johnwest.co.uk are advertising on mainstream television their ability to enter can codes and view origin as well. A fantastic storytelling opportunity for brands here! I wrote a little about it a few weeks back. http://nickwallen.posterous.com/marketing-the-unfinished-product

[MarketingXD]

This smells fishy.

The pictures do not show actual fish. For example the following two fish have the same picture, even though they are different species:
http://traceandtrust.com/default.aspx?id=18&fishid=PR608
http://traceandtrust.com/default.aspx?id=18&fishid=PR610
And this picture shows no fish at all:
http://traceandtrust.com/default.aspx?id=18&fishid=OC614

I've tried lots of different values for id and fishid, but the only fish I can find are two small clusters with fishid values around those mentioned above.

Very fishy!

[Robin saitz]

David, I love this story on several levels. I too am a fish eater and was disheartened to read last week's globe article. However, what was more interesting to me was this group trace and trust. You see, my son is on a FIRST Lego League Team where the focus this year is on food safety. Each year the kids have to do a research project, along with building a Lego-based robot. My son proposed the idea of using qr codes to trace food from it's origins to the supermarket to understand not just the supply chain but how the food was handled in the supply chain (I.e. The temp inside the trucks for transport, etc.) they ended up pursuing a different idea, but I enjoyed learning about trace and trust and sharing your article with the team. It was great validation for these 8th graders. To learn more about FLL, visit http://www.firstlegoleague.org/challenge/2011foodfactor

Robin

[David Meerman Scott]

Robin - Wow that's so interesting. And to think they are only 8th graders!