QR Code Blindness

I'm frustrated. I'm often frustrated, but I am not often driven to post a blog about it. This is one of those very rare occasions where I simply have to vent my frustration, and where better than online?

My current cause for frustration is the apparent blindness (IMHO) of marketers getting all hot and sticky over the exciting world of QR codes. QR codes have been around for well over 10 years. They are currently, and have been for a while, flavour of the moment because of the massive growth in smartphone sales and ownership. These devices, which are carried everywhere by their device-reliant owners, have cameras and apps installed on them designed by any number of developers. Which means they can have apps on them which will enable the owner to read codes which, until more recently, were only really used by shipping companies and shops to store detailed information about packages or products. But let me back-pedal just a touch.

What is a QR Code? A QR code is a 2 dimensional barcode. I won't bore you with the details, but if you've seen a white square with a messy maze like arrangement of small black squares on a brochure, the web, a business card or even a menu, the chances are you've already engaged with a QR code. You just might not have been aware of it. I would suggest you would not be alone in that. Far from it. A QR code can contain a bunch of text, which means that it can link you to an online point of interest; a video, a website, an online business card, a pdf, facebook page, linked in profile... the list goes on. Essentially you, as the owner of a smartphone, are expected to get your phone out, launch a reader app (You do have one right? If not, you should immediately go and download one...) and scan the code with the phone's camera. Voila! You have been taken off to a magical engaging online experience which will make you, as a customer, delight in the cleverness and simplicity of your newly acquired relationship status with the marketing genius that put a QR code on the brochure.

So why am I frustrated? Because I keep hearing and reading marketers banging on about how exciting this is. And I simply don't get it. I understand the logic. I understand that it gives the users of smartphones the ability to engage with us, as suppliers of goods or services. I understand that it has a technological excitement - a bunch of dots turning into a video? Wow! What I really don't understand is why we are expecting people to do this.

There are many, many chunks of content on the web extolling the virtues of QR codes from a marketing point of view. Some go into some length advising you on how important it is to get the execution of QR code marketing right, and to some extent they are correct. My suggestion, however, is that they are slightly missing the point at a very basic level. Only a very few people will ever use this technology in the way it has to be used now. Launching a specially installed QR app on my phone to engage with an online experience is something that only the true technocrats, or the technically curious, amongst us will ever do. I do it, sure. But then I'm into the technology of the thing.  I scan barcodes in shops to find cheaper deals online or locally. I scan QR codes on marketing gumph because I want to see how people are using the technology. To be honest if the QR links me to a webpage that is nothing to do with the specific context of the document it linked from, and it often is simply a website, I'm a little underwhelmed.

I've also seen reports dotted here or there which proclaim that QR codes have come of age, based entirely on presented percentages and a large amount of supposition. If QR codes are so popular, then show me the numbers. I'm happy to accept that my instincts about the general populaces' lack of willingness to get their phone out to scan a code on a piece of marketing gumph is untrue, but I need the proof I'm afraid.

This technology will be able to come of age when the user has full access to an augmented reality. When we have, say, glasses which throw up a HUD overlaying the street we are walking down. A technology that recognises the face of the person we're talking to and shows us a summary of their LinkedIn profile. But all of this, I suggest, will only become used by the masses when it is click-free, automatic, by which point it won't need to be a messy pile of black squares in a bigger white square. The camera will need to be constantly looking for those cues; be they buildings or logos. It will be permanently on, and there's a whole world of privacy issues down that street.

Having said all this, I do believe that the technology will ultimately read the world for us, and show us what we want to know about it. QR codes are an evolutionary step towards this, but there is far more exciting technology being used out there which already does what we'd love QRs to be able do, but they can't.