I couldn’t wait for this to happen.

Continental Airlines has followed on the heels of Air Canada, and started allowing passengers to use a code sent to a cellphone as a boarding pass.

Marketers ought to take note about what this means for all other forms of paper validation, such as:

• Coupons with short expiry dates and location-based offers (say a book discount at a Borders store in just one zip code)
• Tickets to events that could be promoted and ‘pulled’ by a self-qualifying target audience

Text messaging campaigns are amazingly affordable, and less complicated than people think. Renting a short code, or buying a vanity code is a lot cheaper than, say, a magazine ad. Besides saving a lot of trees, and making you look good, too.