The Peril of QR Codes

I haven’t written a rant in quite some time, but the current use of QR Codes infuriates me to no end. I’m sure my fellow marketers are sick of hearing my rant and frankly, I’m sick of hearing it myself since I loathe complaining without doing anything to fix the situation. But, here it goes anyway.

I love the idea of QR Codes. I love imagining the possibilities and I love thinking about where QR Codes could take us in the future. But, I also know that with the way 99.9% of marketers are using QR Codes, we are never going to get to my vision of the future.

While it takes marketers a bit of time and effort to create a QR Code, it takes the consumer even more time to interact with it. Think about it – a consumer has to:

1. See and recognize a QR Code for what it is
2. Take their phone out of their pocket/purse
3. Unlock their phone, which these days typically also involves inputting a password
4. Then, they have to flip through the screens to find the app (which they had to download beforehand)
5. Open app
6. Scan QR Code
7. Wait for it to register
8. Get content

Holy shit, that’s a lot of steps. In this day and age, even though some of those steps take mere seconds, getting to what’s behind a QR Code isn’t necessarily instant gratification. Consumers have to work to get that content. When you have to work for something, especially when it’s an advertising message, it better be a damn good one.

Unfortunately, what’s behind most QR Codes these days is not only worthless but also a frustrating waste of time. Here’s a few examples of pure horribleness that I’ve discovered:

1. Print shop sends direct mail piece with QR code on it. Nothing else, including no instructions because clearly all their potential clients are QR Code savvy When scanned, the code takes you to their NON-mobile optimized homepage. This was just a #FAIL all around.
2. QR Codes were abundant at CES. I was excited. If anyone was going to get it, it had to be advertisers at CES, right?! WRONG. Maybe I missed the good ones, but all the ones I scanned took me to… wait for it… their NON-mobile optimized homepage. WTF. Why do this? Because I can access a QR Code from somewhere other than a MOBILE device?
3. Admittedly, the last two years I have loved the social advertising campaigns for The Grammy’s. This old school brand has jumped head first into the digital space to engage audiences. Not only have they jumped but they’ve also put some serious dollars behind that jump. This year, all their print ads were tagged with a QR Code. Unfortunately, half of them didn’t scan correctly and the other half took you to a flash-like site that couldn’t be seen or utilized via any mobile phone I was using. I hope the advertising agency that failed to properly test the QR Code before putting it on EVERYTHING got fired.

Dear Marketer, If you’re spending all this time to create a QR Code and the consumer is spending all their time to get the content, why not make it worth everyone’s while? Why not milk it for all it’s worth? Let’s have some video, let’s have a phone number that I can click to call, let’s have a MOBILE OPTIMIZED website AND a special landing page for the campaign. Let’s have something worth the effort it took me to get to there.

Marketers, my biggest fear is that if we continue to do a piss poor job of using QR Codes to communicate, consumers are going to stop engaging with them. It will be a case of the Boy Who Cried Wolf… by the time marketers figure out how to use them to their advantage, consumers won’t believe it enough to scan the darn things.