Everyone has an opinion on QR codes. People mostly think marketers love them and consumers hate them. One consumer recently demonstrated to me that he could more quickly enter the website of a poster instead of open his QR code reader and have the code take him to the website. Dave Wienke of AdAge makes a strong argument that QR codes are just a transitional technology:
If someone had figured out a way to do that with a QR code, we would know it by now. We’ve seen them everywhere — bathroom walls, billboards and rub-on tattoos — tossed like digital spaghetti against a wall in hopes that some of it will stick, or click, to an ad. Overuse of a new technique is nothing new. New technology tends to follow a predictable path from discovery, to overuse and disillusionment, and eventually, a proper or right level of use. But in the case of QR codes, that “right level” is likely to be fairly low and short-lived. Because it’s the marketers, not the customers, who are so enamored with it.
Various talking heads have called this “The year of the QR code,” and said that the codes will revolutionize the print industry. Does anyone remember the Cue Cat? It was a device that came out in the 1990s and readers were going to use it to scan bar codes in magazines, which would take them to innovative websites. Sound familiar?
QR codes have a big leg up on the bar codes that were read by the Cue Cat. The technology to use them is already in most people’s pockets. We would assume this type of access might play a major role in the QR code’s success, but that’s only part of the story. The rest of the picture shows why we shouldn’t get too attached to the QR code.
Much is promised. Little is delivered. Remember last summer when Calvin Klein unveiled a giant QR code on Houston Street in New York? Probably not. The code took people to yet another video of alienated, attractive, semi-dressed 20-somethings traipsing around urban landscapes. Yawn. Where haven’t we seen that before? That was the advertising equivalent of “I shaved my legs for this?”
What do you think? Are QR codes transitional or will companies find a better use for them than marketing? Or will they dissipate all together?
