According to marketer Sean Cummings, the current use of quick-response (QR) codes in advertising is a combination of stupid, useless, uncreative and uninspiring.
“From the relative lack of public understanding of what they even are, to the dearth of creativity in their usage, the QR code is destined to become just the little box that geek built. But if it does go the way of CueCat, only we are to blame,” Cummings writes.
(The CueCat was a cat-shaped handheld barcode reader introduced in the late 1990s; it’s on PC Magazine’s list of the 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time.)
But whereas the CueCat was simply a bad idea, the QR code has some promise, which means that its failure is our failure. Cummings: “A QR code is a tool, nothing more, and it is a poor marketer who blames the tool. The vast majority of [the QR codes] I scanned landed me on a webpage that was the same URL as in the ad itself. That is about as useful as telling someone your name while wearing a name tag.”
Fortunately, Cummings doesn’t stop there. He offers up five creative ideas that tap the nascent potential of this marketing tool. But even with these methods, Cummings concedes that the QR code could still go the way of the dodo.
“[Until] Apple includes a native QR code application and automatically integrates it with their camera application, QR codes will remain a curious oddity for the technically proficient geeks and bleeding adopters. Such is the power of the iPhone to influence,” he writes. “Does it hurt to use them in your ads? Not really, unless the payoff to the consumer is so incredibly lame that it causes a negative appraisal of the company among influencers. So please do not use them to just send people to your homepage URL. Most of us can read, and type faster.”
Thanks, Jeb!
Hmm, your article quotes the author as saying: “The vast majority of [the QR codes] I scanned landed me on a webpage that was the same URL as in the ad itself. That is about as useful as telling someone your name while wearing a name tag.”
Just thinking: as the (we) surly adopters begin to get comfortable with the QR code concept (and I personally have had ROI success with them, ask me), it is actually helpful to also include the QR code’s destination URL, so that the remainder majority of “nav nots” can still access the content.
But the article is dead-on in inferring that it’s too clunky to scan a QR code, and faster (for some of us) to just type the URL into a browser.
Another #QRFAIL factor: IMHO not linking to actionable, fulfillment oriented content. Link to your homepage? Boring! ~Ed