Portland. The city best known for their beards, beers, and birds is also a town of Food Nerds (for the record, I mean that as a compliment). Portlanders love their food carts, anything sustainable and bacon.

Portland Monthly highlights Portland's love of food in its March issue featuring 60 meals under $20. Also included in the March issue, is this week's Scan of the Week! Portland Monthly uses Digimarc's menu button overlay on a Nahm Prik Ong image. After scanning the image, readers can download a shopping list for making Nahm Prik Ong and can watch a recipe video. In this example, Portland Monthly demonstrates how you can have multiple engagements from one watermark. Congrats again to Portland Monthly for providing succulent, interactive content in their latest issue.

Congratulations to House Beautiful! They are the first “Scan of the Week” recipient. It’s not surprising that House Beautiful received this honor since over the past 18 months they‘ve developed exciting campaigns around digital watermarking. 

Here’s why House Beautiful’s March cover received the “Scan of the Week.”

Let’s get one thing straight — I am not bashing QR Codes. There are times when using QR codes work extremely well and produce great results. However, no one should use multiple QR codes on any editorial or advertising page. Using multiple QR codes on a page is distracting to the reader, takes away valuable real estate and will infuriate any art director since QR codes (not the editorial/advertising content) is now the focal point on the page.  Instead of placing multiple QR codes on a page, I would recommend using digital watermarking similar to how Coastal Living recently implemented our technology.

In their February issue, Coastal Living placed 8 watermarks on a page. Readers can scan the photos and vote on their favorite coastal town. Additionally, Coastal Living is using Digimarc's Pop-up Label Overlays to ensure people are voting for their favorite coastal town. After scanning, text appears on the phone and users can click on the text to vote.

Now imagine how this page would look with 8 QR codes. (If your stomach is churning, you are correctly envisioning this example.)

Am I biased? Absolutely. But how can you dispute that Digital Watermarking is the most elegant solution for making print interactive? If you disagree, let me know. matthew.szerencse@digimarc.com

This week Digimarc released the Digital Watermarks in Magazines: 2012 Traction Report. The report is filled with great nuggets of information like:

• The number of digital watermarks placed in magazine editorial and advertising content grew by 486% from 2011 to 2012
• The number of magazine titles using digital watermarking grew by 300%, resulting in an addressable circulation of over 37 million readers
• Total scans of watermarked content in magazines grew to over 1.6 million

What have we learned?  For starters, people really enjoy shopping-related watermarked content.  Advertisers take note - Readers will scan if they have a strong incentive like compelling discounts, coupons, sweepstakes and anything free. 

To avoid any more spoilers, I encourage you to read the entire report.

Ah, the holidays. It’s that special time of year where you can overindulge with your family, friends, and food. From Thanksgiving to January 1st it's a holiday cook-off with everyone preparing their favorite secret recipes, gourmet cheeses, delectable chocolates and fancy adult beverages. Then, sometime during January, the music stops and you step back on the scale wondering what the heck happened. Thankfully, Cooking Light has a solution for your extra “holiday poundage” (and possibly your New Year’s Resolution). Cooking Light has watermarked every recipe in their January/February issue. There are a total of 79 scannable recipes in the issue ranging from Stir-Fried Lemongrass Chicken to Lemon Cornmeal Waffles with Raspberry Rhubarb Compote. What makes Cooking Light so satisfying is that I can save every recipe in the issue and make a customizable shopping list right from my mobile device using the Digimarc Discover app. After creating a myrecipes.com account, I can access recipes and shopping lists whenever it’s convenient for me.

Publishers, Brands and Agencies — Pay Attention.

The 100 year-old Good Housekeeping Seal is now interactive. The December issue of Good Housekeeping introduced the interactive Good Housekeeping Seal (made possible by digital watermarking). Readers in the December issue can scan the Seal using the Good Housekeeping Scanned, Sealed, and Delivered app and enter a sweepstakes. Not only did Good Housekeeping receive a major face-lift in its January issue by introducing a new cover, layout and content, but Good Housekeeping kept the good times rolling by including 19 different watermarked Seals on advertisements from brands like Whirlpool, Benjamin Moore, and Panasonic. After scanning the interactive Good Housekeeping Seal, you can enter 19 different sweepstakes from each advertiser.

If you're thinking, "Why does this matter to me?", let me share some insights on why the interactive Good Housekeeping Seal could impact your future publications, advertisements and brand messaging.

It’s the holidays.  Time for overeating, parties, uncomfortable family moments, and shopping lists.  Yes, shopping lists are a staple around the holidays.  Kids make their wish lists for Santa, while adults make theirs for family and friends.  Seventeen Magazine knows the importance of such organization and is using digital watermarking to help their readers create customizable shopping lists directly from the magazine!

The December/January issue of Seventeen contains over two hundred of digital watermarks.  All of the editorial images in Seventeen are watermarked, and after scanning each image/product with the Seventeen Insider App you can make personal shopping lists. 

I recently came across an ad for Ho-Chunk Gaming in the November issue of Madison Magazine. Unlike some of the advertisers in Madison Magazine that used digital watermarking, Ho-Chunk Gaming placed a QR code on their ad.  Unfortunately for Ho-Chunk, the QR code on their ad doesn’t work.  As you can see below, it’s just too small to read.  The only way for me to read it was by enlarging the ad.  Consumers want instant gratification and won’t spend time magnifying the QR code on the ad.  Poor experiences like this are the reason people stop using new technologies – they don’t work well. 

I’ve heard from publishers and brands that QR codes are an eyesore, distracting and an inferior print-to-mobile technology. So, it’s not surprising that Ho-Chunk went with a smaller QR code.  Could this error have been fixed?  Absolutely.  Should someone at Ho-Chunk (or its agency) have tested the ad before it was finalized?  Most definitely.  Would Ho-Chunk been better served using digital watermarking?  Undeniably!  Since digital watermarks are imperceptible, Ho-Chunk would not have to worry about destroying the aesthetics on their creative with a larger QR code or icon.  If Ho-Chunk used digital watermarking like the other advertisers in Madison Magazine, they could have simply added the Madison Icon (shown below) onto their ad to indicate there’s watermarked content.

Our young friend, Patrick, who we think is really amazing, wrote us another letter to let us know that the Discovery Channel/3M Young Scientist Challenge is complete. He had a great time, learned a lot and thanked Digimarc for our support of his project.

Our pleasure, Patrick. Good luck in the future!

And here's an interview of Patrick with a shout out to Digimarc (yes, sorry, the volume is quite low...):

Photoshop World 2012 arrived with a flurry of techy inside jokes, loads of live demos and dozens of workshops led by industry experts. Your very own Digimarc for Images team landed in booth 235 armed with exclusive discounts on our Basic, Professional and Enterprise subscriptions, a Travel Photographer of the Year photo book prize and digitally watermarked tees. Our very own Seth Wood on the Marketing team hand-crafted the image.

These are no ordinary tee shirts however. They not only look fantastic, but they are watermarked and utilize Digimarc Discover, our Print-to-Mobile technology. The team had a wonderful opportunity to not only tout our online image safeguard solution Digimarc for Images, but also explain how Digimarc Discover worked as well. For a thorough explanation, check out Don’s previous blog post.

Thank you to all who attended Photoshop World. We had a blast signing up new DFI customers, renewing current ones and chatting with attendees from all around the world!