Has anyone ever used QR codes in printed ads?

Michael_Dare

We've always had problems running ads for our websites in printed media - people simply do not put down a newspaper or magazine and go to their computer. I've been wondering if QR codes might provide an answer.

If you encounter a QR code in a magazine, do you you flash your phone at it? Do most people with smart phones even know what a QR code is, and what they should do with it?

Anyone with personal experience in this area?

youcancallmeal

I don't have any evidence to back this up but I'm pretty sure QR codes are a gimmick that have run there course. It's all good in theory but the reality is most people try it once when they get their smartphone then never again. If you're already printing the ads though there is probably no harm in adding them in?

The Apprentice

I have done them and implemented them into adds in relation to some sunday business Post conferences -

As mentioned above, a gimmic really ... Sooner they die a death the better.

Michael_Dare

Waste of time, then. Thanks.

juan.kerr

I have never bothered scanning one, I would imagine most other people are the same.

Solair

I've yet to see *anyone* use them.

I think they were/are popular in Japan, but it's often the case that Japanese marketing phenomena don't carry over to Europe and North America.

I wonder if QR Codes make sense when Japanese/Chinese characters are extremely tricky to input on a phone. Thus, it's easier to scan a code.

Short & memorable URLs make more sense to me.

Also, QR code reading software on iPhones, Android etc is very cumbersome. You typically have to open the app, find the QR code, take a photo, wait for it to scan... could you be bothered?!

highlandseoghan

I scan a few of them every now and then if the ad grabs my attention. Recently I was asking friends, family and colleagues about them and a lot either didnt know anything about them or never bothered to scan them if they did know about them.

If I was running a print ad tho it would do no harm to stick it in. Your paying for the ad so adding a qr code wont cost anything.

juan.kerr

Solair wrote: »

Also, QR code reading software on iPhones, Android etc is very cumbersome. You typically have to open the app, find the QR code, take a photo, wait for it to scan... could you be bothered?!

The amazon.co.uk app allows you to scan a barcode within the amazon app so they can be a bit better integrated, but would I go to all that bother to be 'avertised at'...

juan.kerr

I'd also wonder do that many people even know what they are when they see them.

johnmuldoon

If you are going to use QR codes, make sure your site is optimized for mobile!

Stamply

QR codes are a tool, nothing more nothing less. They are not some future industry-saving technology.

They have advantages and disadvantages like all technology.

People who say they are "dying" are just fobbing them off because they've been taught to have far to high expectations of specific technology features.

Many people know how to use them and in specific repetitive processes they are fine.

They are also open-source so putting them on a print ad is free. If some people scan then great, if not, who cares. Mobile optimised sites are a necessity, as said above, but that is a given these days with or without a QR code as a quarter of the population is searching and browsing more on mobile than desktop now.

Apple is using them in their new Passbook loyalty service: http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/22/chasing-apple-microsofts-neomedia-qr-code-patent-deal-puts-more-focus-on-geometric-boxes/

Simply lower your expectations and you'll understand what QR codes are for. Its also a trivial process to measure how many users are coming to your site from the QR code on the ad, so on that metric they are a perfectly transparent and "innocent" marketing tool. Considering the common belief that "half the money you spend on advertising is wasted, you just don't know which half," then that is a pretty valuable quality in a print ad. And even if only 10 people scan it, and you run another ad where 20 people scan it, so you only get a small number of people to your mobile site, you know that the second ad was 100% more engaging than the first, which equates to an additional 100% revenue generated from that advertisement. Measurement is management, right?

To sum up, for me, anyone who says that QR codes are dead or dying, especially if they work in or around tech, has lost (or never had) the ability to think and is just saying what ever the crowd says.

Solair

I would agree that they're dying wither but, as yet I haven't seen a slick implementation of them.

With better apps or à fully integrated function in the OS it might work.

Ideally it should be a case of press a button point at the code and voilà!

mo_bhicycle

There is one fundamental problem with QR codes which turns people off scanning them: You don't know what the hell you're gonna get after you've scanned it. Is it going to be a web address, a contact number, a string of text, an email address, some gps coordinates ...
They are often placed in intentionally ambiguous contexts where it is difficult to make an educated guess.

After a certain period of time people get sick of pulling out their phones, load up the app, scanning the barcode, only to be sent to some website they don't want to go to.

I just wish people would state, in text beside the QR code, what information is contained within the QR code.

witnessmenow

TodayFm had a QR code on one of their ads in the paper, curious to what it was for I took out my phone, opened my QR scanner, held it up to the page .... todayfm.com I would have been about 10 times as fast typing that! havent scanned one since!

Stamply

witnessmenow wrote: »

TodayFm had a QR code on one of their ads in the paper, curious to what it was for I took out my phone, opened my QR scanner, held it up to the page .... todayfm.com I would have been about 10 times as fast typing that! havent scanned one since!

Cases like that are misrepresentations and bad implementations. You wouldn't blame a hammer if someone tried to use it to screw in a lightbulb?

And would you stop using a hammer forever if once you banged your pinky finger?

Stamply

http://corp.rewardloop.com/

All of the negative posts here are about lack of awareness and bad implementation of a useful tool, but yee are only focusing on print ads, in which they are of obvious but limited use. They are best used for measuring the effectiveness of a campaign.

But they have many more uses than this particular context.

For example:
http://corp.rewardloop.com/

I often wonder why print media companies with profitable online services like the Financial Times don't use them more fundamentally as part of their content. I mean, the amount of backdated content under-utilised by these companies on particular subjects is enormous.

Imagine if at the end of a great article you had a QR code leading to related articles in the paid online service.

For unprofitable print media companies like the Independant Group it would be ****, but for the Financial Times and others it would be amazing.

Thats my 2c, come on people, think outside the box please!?!

CelticRambler

Stamply wrote: »

Cases like that are misrepresentations and bad implementations. You wouldn't blame a hammer if someone tried to use it to screw in a lightbulb?

And would you stop using a hammer forever if once you banged your pinky finger?

But that's the problem with advising people to "use them anyway, your print ad won't cost anymore". Bad implementation devalues the apparent usefulness of the tool in users' eyes.

QR codes have just been "discovered" in France and every public body is splatting them on every available surface - but most of them haven't yet understood what exactly the internet is or does. We're still at the 'phone me to say you've sent an e-mail stage ... :eek:

Stamply

CelticRambler wrote: »

But that's the problem with advising people to "use them anyway, your print ad won't cost anymore". Bad implementation devalues the apparent usefulness of the tool in users' eyes.

QR codes have just been "discovered" in France and every public body is splatting them on every available surface - but most of them haven't yet understood what exactly the internet is or does. We're still at the 'phone me to say you've sent an e-mail stage ... :eek:

Fair point, but its not the point that is being made by everyone in this thread. On that logic, it just takes time for people to figure out how to use a useful little tool, which is very different from saying they are "dead."

Remember people, the combustion engine is old tech, but so far we haven't managed to replace it. There is currently nothing ubiquitously available that does what QR codes do better than QR codes, i.e. bringing a mobile user from a "real" world information source to an online information source quickly and reliably and communicating with a server based upon a simple intuitive human behaviour.

Stamply

Stamply wrote: »

Fair point, but its not the point that is being made by everyone in this thread. On that logic, it just takes time for people to figure out how to use a useful little tool, which is very different from saying they are "dead."

Remember people, the combustion engine is old tech, but so far we haven't managed to replace it. There is currently nothing ubiquitously available that does what QR codes do better than QR codes, i.e. bringing a mobile user from a "real" world information source to an online information source quickly and reliably and communicating with a server based upon a simple intuitive human behaviour.

And anyone who says RFID is also missing the point entirely

Peterdalkey

Stamply wrote: »

Cases like that are misrepresentations and bad implementations. You wouldn't blame a hammer if someone tried to use it to screw in a lightbulb?

And would you stop using a hammer forever if once you banged your pinky finger?

I would blame the idiot that used the hammer and the clown that suggested that the user was going to be somehow better off by scanning his dumb QR by putting out there in the first place.

The technology does not come embedded in handheld devices, it requires near geek status to bother to download it. I am afraid it is up there with the joke that has to be explained... You have already lost the impact and more importantly, the target audience.

Just looked in my fridge to see what products had a QR on them... I found none. I could see the benefit if Hellmans or Kraft Cottage cheese threw up some recipes if I bothered to scan, but hey the back of a bus/truck? Yeah right! It seems to me it is more used by those who want to portray an image of being up there to the FB generation.

Cheers

Dinosaur Peter

Stamply

I would blame the idiot that used the hammer and the clown that suggested that the user was going to be somehow better off by scanning his dumb QR by putting out there in the first place.

The technology does not come embedded in handheld devices, it requires near geek status to bother to download it. I am afraid it is up there with the joke that has to be explained... You have already lost the impact and more importantly, the target audience.

Just looked in my fridge to see what products had a QR on them... I found none. I could see the benefit if Hellmans or Kraft Cottage cheese threw up some recipes if I bothered to scan, but hey the back of a bus/truck? Yeah right! It seems to me it is more used by those who want to portray an image of being up there to the FB generation.

Cheers

Dinosaur Peter

All decent Smartphones over the past 6 months have come with QR reader and anyone that can use an app at all (applications are by definition accessible to the lay/average Joe phone user) you can use a QR reader. In fact, if you can use your camera app, you're completing exactly the same actions as a decent QR reader.

Again,
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/22/chasing-apple-microsofts-neomedia-qr-code-patent-deal-puts-more-focus-on-geometric-boxes/

Peterdalkey

Stamply wrote: »

All decent Smartphones over the past 6 months have come with QR reader and anyone that can use an app at all (applications are by definition accessible to the lay/average Joe phone user) you can use a QR reader. In fact, if you can use your camera app, you're completing exactly the same actions as a decent QR reader.

Again,
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/22/chasing-apple-microsofts-neomedia-qr-code-patent-deal-puts-more-focus-on-geometric-boxes/

Obviously Peter, you know much more than Apple about the design of user-friendly handheld devices and their software applications. Please enlighten all of us from the FB-generation about what works and doesn't work in consumer tech. You're generation has been so unambiguously prescient about the subject. The predictive qualities of a generation of middle-aged Irish men and women has shown itself to be unparalleled. It amazes me, really and truly, how accurate my parents cohort have been about the future of tech and all other trends [& cycles].

:P

You are so lucky to have come from such a prescient gene pool, I am sure your folks were far too smart to have bought FB shares. They are also gifted with the experience that bestows great wisdom from lifelong learning.
I know it probably does not suit, but I am not prepared to bin my iPhone 4s, iPad 2, Kindle, laptop or PC just yet, no matter how embarrassing my ownership is to the junior generation. They doth protest too much, and I would really miss that!

Stamply

Peterdalkey wrote: »

You are so lucky to have come from such a prescient gene pool, I am sure your folks were far too smart to have bought FB shares. They are also gifted with the experience that bestows great wisdom from lifelong learning.
I know it probably does not suit, but I am not prepared to bin my iPhone 4s, iPad 2, Kindle, laptop or PC just yet, no matter how embarrassing my ownership is to the junior generation. They doth protest too much, and I would really miss that!

Again, its not that the tool is dead, its that its applications are misunderstood. Read my posts above properly and you should get to grips with a couple of interesting uses. QR codes will be knocking around for as long as internet enabled phones and cameras are attached to each other, nothing will do the job they do better as far as I can see.

That said, they won't change your life!

Just lower your expectations and you'll see the light, I promise :rolleyes:

Peterdalkey

Stamply wrote: »

1) Personally, I never really saw much wisdom in my parents generation, as a whole, although my parents themselves I respect. "Safe as houses" was the mantra up until recently right? And look what yee did to our education system!

Please don't condescend to "the facebook generation," Irish Oldies have shown themselves to be the most stupid generation since the one that voted a silly little man with a stupid narrow mustache into power in Europe back in the thirties. And at least he had a plan!

2) With all that tech you would think you could manage to work a QR reader.

Again, its not that the tool is dead, its that its applications are misunderstood. Read my posts above properly and you should get to grips with a couple of interesting uses. QR codes will be knocking around for as long as internet enabled phones and cameras are attached to each other, nothing will do the job they do better as far as I can see.

That said, they won't change your life!

Just lower your expectations and you'll see the light, I promise :rolleyes:

ee
Ah thanks for the the mental jog, tool, thats the word I was looking for!

Seen a full page ad in a local paper a few months back. I was taking out ads at the time myself so knew the prices.

Anyway, the page was plain white, with a thin black border around it, with one of these codes slap bang in the centre. I remember thinking to myself at the time about what an outrageous advertisement it was. There was no mention of anything at all. Just the code printed in the centre of the page.


I never bothered to scan it though. Seemed like a ludicrous waste of money. That said, to this day I'm still regretting not scanning it, just to see who it was that actually took a full page ad out to do that with it.

I wouldn't bother with QR stuff. Seems a lot of effort with no real bonus to the user. Perhaps if it were a voucher code for a retail store or something (and people knew that before scanning it) then you'd get people doing it (though you'd wonder if it's just handier to print the voucher code itself).

Solair

I don't know what all the snarly comments on this thread are about.

The simple reality of it is that most people don't use QR codes because they are too much effort to scan and people keep using them for really pointless things.

I've scanned a few QR codes that have taken me to non-mobile editions of corporate websites.

A lot of 'morketing' people just put them on coz they look cool on our advert and you can probably tell the client that this will make them all web-savvy and technological.

QR codes seem like a technology with a lot of potential, when someone comes up with a good use for them.

At the end of the day, they're just matrix barcodes that have had huge success for decades in industry. They are useful for things like tracking packages in automatic sorting systems or rapidly scanning items in an industrial scenario.

The problem as I see it, using both a Samsung Galaxy SII and an iPhone is that you really couldn't be bothered launching an app, pointing your camera at the code, focusing it and waiting for it to grab the picture then waiting for it to go online and translate the QR code into what usually turns out to be a complete waste of time and you end up on some coffee shop's home page.

Make it worth customers' time and they might actually do something e.g. free vouchers, or discount codes or whatever.

The apps are also generally still rather clunky and too time consuming.

I could see something like NFC working for this. People are probably more likely to 'bump' their phone off something to get the info than have to point and shoot with a camera.

Stamply

Solair wrote: »

I've scanned a few QR codes that have taken me to non-mobile editions of corporate websites.

A lot of 'morketing' people just put them on coz they look cool on our advert and you can probably tell the client that this will make them all web-savvy and technological.

Thats an argument against marketing people, not QR codes.

But generally, you are making the same point as me: they are a tool, and a great way to record data from "the field" to a database, like if you wanted to give a customer a point on their account or record the location of a package, etc... get them to scan the code. http://www.spoton.com/
Unfortunately its static data, which makes it totally limited.

But NFC is limited as well. You still have to open an app or enter some information for most "bump" applications, its not as simple as a gesture.

And you require two agents with NFC enabled devices, which you don't have at the moment and for most scenarios where QR codes are useful you never will.

The Apprentice

Seriously Stamply .. have u a vested interest in QR codes or something ???

Its totally rank, and its similar to inventing an ashtray for a motorcycle. Ive seen stupid qr codes right beside a web address on media print..

SIGH is all i said to myself.

Stamply

The Apprentice wrote: »

Seriously Stamply .. have u a vested interest in QR codes or something ???

Its totally rank, and its similar to inventing an ashtray for a motorcycle. Ive seen stupid qr codes right beside a web address on media print..

SIGH is all i said to myself.

QR codes are open-sourced, nobody has a vested interest in them.

I have just heard this kind of commentary so often, people confusing a tool with their misuse.

Was the web address really long? Like this: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=80475308

Personally, I wouldn't like to type that out in a browser, would you?

Solair

Stamply wrote: »

QR codes are open-sourced, nobody has a vested interest in them.

I have just heard this kind of dumb-ass commentary so often, people confusing a tool with their misuse.

Was the web address really long? Like this: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=80475308

Personally, I wouldn't like to type that out in a browser, would you?

No, I'd just shorten it to something like this : http://url.ie/ftam

The Apprentice

Ure missing the point completely..

It brings nothing new to the table and i work in marketing ! Sooner its gone i,ll do a jig on this forum.