Please, stop it with the QR Code stunts!!
You may well have missed it this week but the Metro ran with a small story about the QR code venture by sports betting company Betfair.
This isn’t the first time they have looked to use the technology in a fun, unique way. More recently they added them onto the rears of the British Women’s Beach Volleyball team, an activation that was picked up by much of the press.
At the time I could see what they were trying to do. Chances are they got few signups or extra through people taking pictures of the players during the game itself (or even at the event) but as a gimmick it went well from a PR point of view and would have cost very little to do.
Now they have taken it a step further with the sponsorship of Irish boxer Eamonn O’Kane. This involves placing a QR code on the crotch area of his shorts, a campaign that comes complete with the tag line ‘marketing with balls’ and its own promotional video.
Many in the industry have been crying out when it comes to the use of QR codes and about how many are totally meaningless they are and generally put in places that you cannot use them, i.e. the underground.
With headlines from the likes of Mashable (Why QR codes wont last), The Guardian (WTF, QR Codes?), Business Insider (Death to the QR Code) and Gizmodo (QR Codes: Goodbye and Good Riddance), it has become somewhat of a running joke.
Rather than using the technology for its strengths it has become a PR tool where the objective is to place them in the oddest possible places and gain press coverage for this fact. Otherwise why would they fly them through the sky, on underground posters (opposite the platform), on footballers heads (!) and now on a boxers crotch?!
There has always been an obstacle that has kept QR Codes from really taking off, and that’s the fact you have to download the reader first to then use it and take a picture (as well as the image problem they have).
It’s role is meant to be to act as a shortcut, taking out the hassle of entering a website address and accessing great content (quickly). If it just linking to content that is easily available already or placed in odd places then its use becomes negligible and consumers will not take them seriously.
Hopefully this will the last QR code PR stunt by Betfair, and with the failure to gain much coverage (The Drum and Metro being the only ones of note) it is most likely. At the end of the day, marketeers only have themselves to blame.
What is the most stupid use of QR codes you have you seen? Do you think they will ever become truly useful? Have these stunts destroyed their reputation?
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