Rating: Still loved by the marketers – but what about the consumers?
In contrast to my earlier post this week – where I called the end of QR codes, some interesting data on their use in magazine ads has been released by Nellymoser, a mobile marketing and technology company.
After analysing 164,255 glossy pages from the top 100 magazines, Nellymoser noted a 617% increase in the use of QR codes, including Microsoft Tags and barcodes between January and December 2011.
The number one brands using codes were John Frieda and L’Oreal. The research claims by December more than 8% of ad pages contained a code.
Marketers continue to herald so called ‘mobile action codes’ as a positive step forward in interactive marketing. “The remarkable growth of mobile action codes in 2011 signals that this technology has moved from an experimental phase to becoming an integral part of a brand’s print marketing strategy,” said Roger Matus, Executive Vice President of Nellymoser and the study’s co-author.
A copy of the report is available to download for free here.
Thanks to all readers who commented on my last post on QR. Here a sample of just some of the many interesting points raised:
Judy Hamlton says:A great article with valid points but I fail to see why it has to always be an either/or discussion… QR Codes, NFC and Visual Search all have value in different situations. Instead, we should focus on reaching our chosen audience via the best medium and then choose the technology that suits it. Your point on QR Codes: “One of the hardest challenges for marketers has been creating a compelling reason for consumers to actually want to scan them” is bang on and I feel it is probably the most important issue of the day (although it relates to all three technologies as well). If we try to focus on what benefits the customer at that critical mobile moment, not what benefits the marketer, compelling content should come easier.
Giff Gfroerer says:NFC is nice, right, and certainly covers more ground. However, here in the states, how many phones are actually NFC equiped? Possibly 1% or 2%. So, you want marketers to allocate valuable mobile marketing dollars on NFC when only a few can actually participate?
Now think about the QR codes. How many phones have a camera on board? Possibly 85%? Would I rather market to 85% or 2%? Not a difficult decision. Or even going SMS where 99% of the phones can participate.
Yes, NFC is going to be nice. However, our figures, taking into account handset turnover rates at 22 months, and when the NFC phones will be prevalent/widely available in the market, show us that NFC will not hit the 20% penetration rate of the activated phones, thus qualifying as mass-markte, until 2015, possibly 2016.
Yes, it is nice to be going down this path, and companies should be investing in this technology. However, from a marketing director’s view, this is not a viable marketing strategy in 2012.
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Thanks again for your comments – I expect this is a debate that’ll continue to rage on – we’ll keep you posted.
QR codes came into being nearly 2 decades ago. They are an ancient technology that was kind of cool when people had phones with only 10 buttons on them.
Now with real and virtual keyboards on almost every phone, a QR code is hardly necessary and rarely as “quick response” as just typing a URL. NFC is actually “quick,” while QR is cumbersome at this point.
Consumer in the West, with smartphones, do not care about and do not engage with QR codes in any significant way at all. They are a waste of marketers time to include. Marketers should be thinking about “mobile strategies,” not about QR codes.
The dirty secret is that Consumers will never adopt QR codes in any meaningful numbers. In part, this is due to the saturation bombing of print with QR codes everywhere that lead to near-nothing/no-value mobile experiences. The average person and the early-adopter have given up on QR codes. Only QR code providers continue to Believe.
The rest of us have moved on.
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