QR Codes: So what are those funny monochrome boxes?

Posted by Karen Jones on 14/09/2011 11:30:48

Every few months there seems to be a new craze hitting the Internet World. The latest craze used by marketers is called ‘QR codes’ which stands for Quick Response Code. On scanning with your Smartphone reader, you are instantly directed to a site providing information on the item being advertised. Sounds great, and it could be good news for those in marketing but only when used correctly and I have seen some pretty bad executions recently…

The reason I am not overly convinced about the longevity of QR campaigns is due to their novelty. Right now we are in a kind of frenzied marketing state where every marketing person is asking their agency to give them a QR related campaign; everyone wants to be an early adopter. This is great and has worked well for Social media (think of all the buzz surrounding the Google + launch and the rush to be one of the chosen few to get an invite). Once the hype died down we saw the growth becoming more stable. Well I believe a similar thing will happen with QR codes.

Take Japan as an example. QR codes originated in Japan and for a while were massive, scan rates were through the roof and everyone wanted to scan those black and white boxes. However, now the codes are everywhere, you can’t move without seeing a QR code on everything. What did we see – a severe drop off in scans. Why? Because they have lost their novelty factor and consumers have realised that it’s just another advertising tool.

I’m not saying they don’t have their uses, I just think we need to take a step back and work out where and when they should be used.

Let’s start with some good uses of the technology:

1. Estate Agents – now, it’s not very normal for me to be praising Estate Agents on my blog. Anyone who knows me knows that I rank Estate Agents right up there with car salesmen, cold callers and recruiters. However, a recent wave of brilliance has hit the estate agent World in the form of black and white boxes!

   Walking home from work the other day I passed a beautiful looking house with a For Sale sign outside. Normally I would just wonder what it looked like inside as the other alternative would be to take down the name of the Estate agent and then when I got home scour their website trying to find the property. Some people might do that but I also wonder how many wouldn’t?

   Luckily on this occasion I didn’t need to wonder any more. One scan of the cleverly placed QR code beneath the For Sale sign led me straight to the property page of the estate agent website with full details and images of the property’s interior. Brilliant.

2. Business Cards – if you are anything like me you will have an array of business cards loitering on your desk, most never making it into your contacts list because who wants to spend their time typing up contacts details from a business card?

   However, I have recently been handed business cards that contain a QR code. One quick scan and they are instantly added to my contacts list.

   Ok, so I didn’t mention that the contact was for a water cooler company that I will never use but you see how it could be a good idea.

3. Bus Shelter ads – I’ve spent more time than I wish to remember at bus stops. One thing you almost always see at bus stops are big adverts, normally for new products, new films etc. I always tend to look at them because there’s not much else to do when you’re waiting for a bus.

   Now generally as soon as the bus has come I forget all about the product because it hasn’t really told me much other than the obligatory tag line. However, if it was a product/film/anything really that I was interested in and it had a QR code inviting me to receive some incentive – money off coupon/information you can’t find elsewhere etc. then I’d probably scan it just to see what I was missing. If I thought it was just going to lead me to the standard site with no incentivised content I think I’d probably give it a miss – I’m shallow yes, but so are most consumers.

Some not so good executions.

1. TV – the other night I was watching TV and at the end of a car ad a large QR code popped up on screen, if I had blinked for too long I would have missed it. Now, given that the average TV commercial is 30 seconds long (and often 10 seconds, depending on the television station's purchase of ad time) then what kind of scan rate are these advertisers expecting?

   I know I work in (digital) advertising but we as a profession need to get real about consumers. If you think about it, do you know anyone who sits at home waiting for the TV commercial, smartphone at the ready with QR code scanner loaded and waiting? No, because real consumers don’t do that. Even those who would have been enticed by your advert enough to want to scan the code and find out more would have had to have been poised at the ready, waiting for the code to appear.

   There have been some interesting developments in this field, mainly in America using the very addictive Shazam technology. However, with 30 seconds to get your audience’s attention and for them to get their phone ready and to actually scan the code before the next advert appears I just can’t see this picking up.

2. Underground posters – you might think this a strange one for me to include considering I had bus shelters in my list of positive uses above – and they are very similar concepts. The reason I have it, and the reason I can’t quite believe they are being used is the fact that I have yet to visit an underground station that has any kind of mobile signal! This is a massive oversight.

3. Gravestones – I recently read on Mashable that a new trend is emerging in the US for grieving family members to add a QR code to the gravestone of their dead loved ones. Now, I understand why someone would want to keep their family member’s memory alive by creating a site with photographs. I could actually envisage genealogists getting overly excited about the fact that they could in the future easily trace details of a dead person. However, as in the underground example above I think a few things have been overlooked:

   • A gravestone is there for hundreds of years, if not more. The gravestone is likely to age considerably leaving a pretty unreadable code and leaving future descendants quizzed as to what this strange symbol represents.

   • We are assuming that hundreds of years down the line we will still be using QR codes. Anyone pass the quill and ink…

   • Finally, who is going to pay to keep whatever site the QR code links to online?

   Overall – not the best idea.

As I have shown, there are uses for QR codes, and they are an invaluable resource – when used in the right situations but as always, you need to make your content engaging enough so that consumers will want to interact with you.

Offer users some incentive to scan – whether that is some kind of money off coupon, or content they can’t find anywhere else, don’t just add one because you can!