Long Live the QR Code

This is written is response to an article by Dan Neumann, Emerging Platforms Strategist at Organic, titled “RIP: Why We Don’t Need QR Code Campaigns.”

Some Background
QR Codes are a form of 2D barcoding technology widely used in Asia, especially Japan, as well as parts of Europe. These codes are placed on printed marketing materials, and when a user points the camera on their phone at the code and clicks, the phone reads the barcode and takes the user to a website (they are also widely used for things like phone numbers, digital coupons, and the like). Despite many years of use abroad, the technology has never seen mainstream adoption in the US.

The Case
In brevity, Dan argues that this failure of adoption in the US market is because there is no use for them here. He states (without siting a source) that phones with full keyboards have greater market share in the US than they do in Japan, and by extension that Americans are happy to type URLs into their phone and hence have no use for QR Codes (To be fair, he also states that carriers in Southeast Asia, “ensured that reader applications were installed on every device.”).

What I Have to Say About That
I completely disagree with Dan’s reasoning for QR Codes failure in the US, but I do agree with his advice to marketers (for now) to stick with URLs, at least until the related industries get their collective act together.

Speaking for myself, I’d much rather point my camera and click to get to a mobile website than type it in manually on a chicklet size keypad. And I’d speculate that, given the option, most other users would as well. The problem is a failure of adoption on the part of carriers and handset makers who have not chosen to include the software as a preinstall or even better, as part of the phone’s OS in the US market.

What Dan describes is not a preference on the part of Americans to manually type in URLs, but a high barrier to first-use. Once the app is installed, they never have to do all that work again. But it is a huge hurdle to expect of the user — a multi-step process — to download the software and install it on their phone, in order to use it for the first time. That is a failure of leadership and initiative on the part of both the mobile advertising industry, and of the carriers and the mobile manufactures.

As it is, individual campaigns have been burdened with the responsibility to introduce and educate about the technology: Each campaign that implements a QR Code has to promote not just their product/service, but also promote and educate the user about the technology. And then the onus to download and install the technology is on the users themselves.

So I disagree with Dan’s reasoning that the failure of adoption of QR Codes in the US is because users are just fine with typing URLs into their phone’s keyboard. But I do think, for individual campaigns right now/today, that URLs are the best stop-gap solution.

Another oversight of the argument is that it doesn’t even address the matter of US market penetration for mobile phones with qwerty keyboards vs mobile phones with cameras. For some sobering numbers: Mobile phones with full keyboards (including touch screen keyboards) make up 16% of the US mobile market vs ~80% for phones with cameras (Keyboard Source: Wireless Federation. Camera Source: I pulled it out of my, er, recollection).

There needs to be a coordinated adoption initiative among related industries so that campaigns can focus on their marketing goals instead of educating the public about the technology.

Furthermore, as marketers are aware, most short URLs are taken. Campaign specific URLs are generally longer, for the simple reason of availability. To make them easier to remember, smart marketers will opt to use a memorable phrase, tag line or slogan as the URL for a campaign. Given the choice between typing in an entire phrase on a phone size keyboard vs clicking one button, I’d say the QR Code wins hands down… if only the related industries could collectively get their act together.

Where I agree with Dan is that using URLs for a campaign today is the smart choice. The responsibility for educating the public should not fall on individual campaigns and the responsibility for installing the software should not fall on individual users, and until that problem is addressed, typing in a URL is the best option.

I do think Dan picked the right execution to criticize, but for different reasons — the choice of channel. This appears to be a magazine print ad. I would suggest that OOH is a more appropriate channel for such a mobile code implementation.

One More Thing
I have an intuition about this Ford campaign. The particular example given in this Ford ad is technically not a QR Code. The term QR Code specifically refers to an open standard bar-code created by Denso-Wave of Japan. What is shown in Dan’s example is actually one of Microsoft’s proprietary HCCB Codes. Microsoft is attempting to take on the QR Code open standard, and my intuition is that they may have subsidized this Ford campaign. While I personally prefer to see the adoption of an open standard, at least the campaign would make a lot more strategic (and tactical) sense for both parties involved if this turns out to be the case. But that’s speculation on my part.