Billboards in Toronto have become more tech savvy. Well, at least one of them. In April, Toronto-based Holmes and Lee incorporated photo-enabled Microsoft Tag High Capacity Color Barcode (HCCB) technology into a billboard promoting Reasonpartners.org. Holmes and Lee felt it was a good fit for the philanthropic initiative’s OOH depiction of homeless forest folk. Reasonpartners.org raises awareness about the damaging effects of human sprawl and pollution on wildlife, and aggregates several charities on one site, helping them raise money in a cost-effective manner.

The HCCB tag brings OOH traffic online – it enables viewers with smartphones to navigate directly to Reasonpartners.org on their mobile browser simply by taking a picture of it with their smartphone camera. All they need to do is download a free application called ScanLife to facilitate the process.

‘The Microsoft Tag just made billboards clickable and linkable,’ says Kiko Sato, VP and technical director at Holmes and Lee. ‘That makes them relevant again.’