At the beginning of this season of Parks and Recreation this scene was in the opening sequence.  I wanted to blog about this episode and partly this scene right away, but I decided to wait off until my last post on this blog.  We all know how wonderful mobile communication is and we've spent the semester learning about mobile advertising.  Knowing the importance of all that, it is also nice to be disconnected every once in a while.  Please don't just stay attached to your phones and social networks, nothing can replace person-to-person communication.  I know that this post is a little unrelated and not really what the purpose of this blog should be, but this is something I feel strong about.  Don't get me wrong, I always have my phone on me and I often live-tweet even the most mundane aspects of my life.  But, people should try disconnecting for even just an hour a day.  Try it out, enjoy life.

Scott Gillum of Forbes recently sat down with the CEO of Adjuggler, John Shomaker.  Adjuggler is a digital ad management technology and media services company.  The purpose of the interview was for Shomaker to inform Gillum of five mobile trends to watch for this holiday season.  The list went as follows:

Mars Chocolate company is going on a full on mobile campaign for the holiday season.  this is centered primarily around their M&M and Dove products.  The campaign they have launched is going to be a very cool experience for the users since the information provided is very useful and interactive for the users, and is extremely handy at this time of the year.  The campaign provides users with information on how to include M&Ms and Dove chocolates into their holiday dessert recipes.  This can be extremely helpful for people looking to change things up for the desserts they usually provide for their family or company holiday parties.
Mars Chocolate has proved to know the importance of jumping on mobile strategies, recognizing the high number of smart phone and tablet sales.  They ran a similar campaign this past March leading up to Easter.  This campaign is primarily based around banner ads and when the user clicks on the ad they are directed to the page that provides the recipes.  This is a very cool and relevant way to reach out and interact with their consumers.  

I recently saw on MCTS's Facebook page that they are going to start integrating QR codes into their bus stops.  Currently these are still in the testing phase.  I personally have yet to see them, they are at bus stops around the UWM campus and some areas of Wisconsin Avenue.  Passengers waiting at these stops will be able to use their smart phones to scan the Quick Response Code and it will tell them when the next bus is scheduled to arrive at that particular stop.  

Mobile Marketer has reported that QR Codes were a smashing success this year on Black Friday.  The report was put out by Scanlife and it claimed that the usage of QR codes went up by 50% on Black Friday.  Reportedly, Scanlife saw over a quarter million scans between 7 pm Eastern Time on Thanksgiving day and 7 pm Eastern Time on Black Friday.  That is a substantial raise from what they get on a typical day.  
One thing that this could indicate is that marketers are starting to find more creative ways to integrate QR Codes into their strategies.  Sometimes the destinations the codes bring you to makes the consumers feel that it is not even worth the scan, but as more research is done people are finding out what works and what doesn't work.  One item that was scanned the most was a recently released DVD.  The offering that came with this code was for a rebate.  That just shows how creative marketers are becoming with using these codes.  That is giving the consumer a benefit they can immediately see, and a reason to scan the code.