Odds are you’ve never heard of QR codes, but they may revolutionize how you interact with businesses, brands, even your own communities and social networks. Alan Schulman’s piece in iMedia Connection today does a great job of explaining what it is and how it works, and I can’t recommend the read highly enough.

Here’s a couple examples. Say you sell jeans to department stores. The stores have really taken over all in-store branding control, so there’s no real estate for you to expand your brand. You have the jeans and maybe a little signage to work with. Mobile changes the equation dramatically, and QR codes can play a big part. You simply include a QR code on the jeans tag or on your signage. Customer snaps a shot of it, and all of a sudden back comes a world of on-point, opt-in brand engagement. You have superimposed “mobile real estate” over the women’s jeans section of the department store.

Or say you’re a small non-profit community activist group – somebody like a Democrats Work or Environment Colorado. You’re out in public working for change and the good of the community, and your volunteers are all wearing your t-shirts. You want to be noticed, you want these efforts to attract new volunteers and donors – in other words, these are also branding activities.

What if you put a call to action with a mobile short code – or even better, a QR code – on those shirts. People who see you and think they may be interested can flip out the phone, access your code, and immediately get info on how they can be involved themselves.

Take five minutes and you can think up 20 or more ways this could be the future of your organization, huh?