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Bar Codes Add Detail on Items in TV Ads

A screenshot One of Bluefly’s “Closet Confessions” commercials, featuring Bethenny Frankel of “The Real Housewives of New York City,” with scannable information about things for sale on Bluefly.

Bar codes, the tiny black and white boxes that have been popping up in magazines, on posters and on some billboards, are arriving on television.

From the comfort of their sofas, mobile-phone users can scan a bar code embedded in commercials on certain evening shows on Bravo and instantly obtain additional information about a product and a discount to buy it.

The 45-second commercials by the online fashion retailer Bluefly show snippets of its “Closet Confessions” interviews with designers and celebrities like Bethenny Frankel, who appeared on “The Real Housewives of New York City,” and the Olympic figure skater Johnny Weir.

When the cellphone is pointed at the on-screen bar code, the user is linked to a complete closet-baring episode, which can run as long as five minutes, and offered a $30 discount on a $150 purchase at bluefly.com, which sells designer and other branded clothing and accessories.

“We see this as a great way to expand our audience in a measurable way,” said Bradford Matson, Bluefly’s chief marketing officer. “This is new for us, but we expect our page views to double.”

Bravo’s audience “is very engaged in fashion and pop culture,” said Mr. Matson. In previous seasons, Bluefly worked with Bravo’s popular television series “Project Runway,” where novice designers compete. (The show has since moved to Lifetime.)

Bar codes have been used more widely in Asia and Europe, including on television, but in the United States, the lack of one standard code — reminiscent of the quarrel over VHS and Beta formats — as well as the relatively small number of smartphone users equipped with appropriate software have slowed the technology’s use, said Michael Becker, managing director for North America of the Mobile Marketing Association, the industry’s group.

“Using bar codes is starting to spread,” he said, “because more people are using smartphones, and many of those phones have the scanning application to read the codes.”

Cellphone fees — whether the user has an Internet access plan or pays for each data download — have also hampered such mobile technologies. Even so, a report last month from Nielsen predicted that smartphones, which now account for 25 percent of the domestic mobile market, would overtake standard mobile phones by the end of 2011.

Mr. Becker predicted that bar codes would become more common because “they are simple and quick to use,” he said, “and they trigger a richer, quicker and more interactive experience for the user.”

The Bravo campaign is using the traditional bar code, called a QR, or quick response, code to connect the user wirelessly to Web sites, photos or videos from an advertiser. Its campaign, created internally and produced with Moxie Pictures, employs Scanbuy software. Competitors like JagTag use a different technology and its bar codes can be colorful.

While Bluefly is the first national retailer to use bar codes in its television commercials, the Weather Channel and HBO also have briefly tested the technology. In February, the Weather Channel ran a promotion to urge viewers to gain access to more local weather data by downloading its Android phone application from the bar code on its screen. The Weather Channel reported that mobile application downloads increased by 20 percent.

In May, in the last episode of ABC’s “Lost” series, HBO broadcast a bar code to promote the third season of its summer vampire series, “True Blood,” to audiences in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. The bar code, which was red and black with a drop of blood, was designed by Warbasse Design and ran at the end of a 30-second commercial to advertise the series.

“For now, this is a clever way to make the commercial last longer,” said Philip Warbasse, chief executive of Warbasse Design, based in Santa Monica. “It’s in its infancy now but within a year or two, this will be mainstream with bar codes becoming the preferred method for television advertisers to deliver extras to interested viewers.”

Those extras, in Bluefly’s campaign, include extended peeks into the lavish closets of Ms. Frankel, Mr. Weir, the fashion designer Christian Siriano, Nicky Hilton, the model Harley Viera Newton and the publicist Kelly Cutrone and her young daughter. The commercials will be seen on “Top Chef,” “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” “The Real Housewives of D.C.,” “Flipping Out,” “Top Chef Just Desserts” and “The Rachel Zoe Project” through the fall season.

Bluefly hopes that the ease and convenience of clicking on a bar code will encourage more viewers to learn about the Web site. Online “Closet Confessions” fans, Mr. Matson said, have increased their shopping orders an average of 50 percent, from $300 to $450.

“We have added new style stars after the Web video series was so successful,” he said. “We got a half-million page views the first month we launched it.” “Closet Confessions,” Mr. Matson said, “is custom-made for the fashion obsessed.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: Bar Codes Add Detail On Items In TV Ads. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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