The almost 100-year-old school memorabilia company is fusing the venerable school yearbook with a cutting-edge mobile experience. Some schools already have started placing Tags next to photos of events like pep rallies, which then play a video of the event on the reader’s phone. Down the road, schools can use Tags to link a student’s yearbook picture to his or her profile on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Classmates.com.
Herff Jones is working with students and editors to pioneer one of the first yearbook implementations of Tag. Throughout the school year, representatives from the company meet with students and yearbook staff at journalism conventions, teaching them how to structure the annual publication so it will be educational, award-winning -- and now, mobile-ready. Herff Jones chose Tag over other barcode technologies because of its ability to be visually tailored, complementing the overall yearbook design.
“Tags are...designed well,” said Matt Leighton, Lead Product Development Specialist at Herff Jones. Other QR solutions were “too barcode-looking, [but] Tags had a better visual feel,” he said, adding that Tag “allows you to customize more than QR.”
Herff Jones also incorporates five to six Tags in their direct mail catalogs, which have a circulation of about 15,000. The Tags link to photos, videos, and downloads like PDFs and white papers, simultaneously engaging customers and saving the company money on printing. The company plans to create an even more Tag-rich environment by increasing the number of Tags in each issue.