a story<\/a> today about how this little black and white eyesore will revolutionize brand marketing and interact with “that brand at a whole other level.” Now I am not attacking Transworld in particular or print in general in this little rant, so I want to make that clear right now. In fact, the more time goes by and things progress, the more I have realized there is definitely a place now, and will be in the future, for quality print publications in snowboarding, skateboarding, etc. These activities are very visual and let’s face it, photographic shred porn just doesn’t translate to the Internet like it does in glossy pages. That said, QR Codes are just retarded… With so many reasons that QR codes are a waste of marketing dollars, here are just a few.<\/p>\n1. Most people don’t know what they are or what to do with them.<\/strong> So you’re checking out the latest issue of your favorite mag and you come across a QR Code in an ad for a company you may or may not care about. What do you do? Oh yeah that’s right, 90% you keep flipping the pages. Because that is how people interact with magazines. But let’s just say you are one of the 10% who see it and are interested. Your next step is pulling out your phone. For the 70% of you who didn’t get lost on that step, now you need to download the app. Figure that lost another 20% of people, even though it’s free. Now we have 10% of 10% of magazine readers left hold their iphone awkwardly over the page trying to line up the code in that little square. Having actually done so myself, I’d just like to point out how many times it has worked for me. Oh yeah, none.<\/p>\n2. People don’t even click on online banners.<\/strong> They don’t. I mean, maybe if it’s got a compelling call to action .2% of people will, but in general, Online ads are simply there for branding (and they work to expose the brand to that site’s audience really well, but that’s about it.) And remember, clicking on online banners is easy. Really is. So not only do QR codes offer a very muddled call to action (if people even know what they are) but they require effort to use. Did you know people are lazy? Yeah, they are.<\/p>\n3. If you’re reading a magazine…<\/strong> There’s a good chance you don’t have Internet access\/phone service. You’re say, on a plane, or in the crapper. So even if you had your phone and wanted to scan a QR Code, you can’t. Yes, I’m sure some people probably still relax on the couch with a cup of tea and a roasty fire curled up with their favorite magazine, and their iphone by their side, but I don’t know any of them.<\/p>\nAdmittedly, I haven’t seen the “amazing analytics” from the ads that have used QR codes, but I’m willing to bet they are even sadder than the average click through rate. My advice to magazines trying to sell ads: concentrate on making amazing content people can’t get online and are willing to pay for. And for advertisers: diversify your marketing, because trying to get people to go to your website with a magazine ad isn’t going to work, no matter how neat the technology seems.<\/p>\n
Oh, and if you are really motivated, scan that QR code above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Archives The latest in a string of useless uses for technology that the magazine industry is desperately embracing are QR Codes. What, you don’t know what QR Codes are or what to do with them? You’re not alone, which is probably why Transworld Biz rolled out a story today about how this little black and white eyesore will revolutionize brand marketing and interact with “that brand at a whole other level.” Now I am not attacking Transworld in particular or print in general in this little rant, so I want to make that clear right now. In fact, the more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[1,461],"tags":[688,689,687],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brookegeery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brookegeery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brookegeery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brookegeery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brookegeery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1256"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brookegeery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1350,"href":"https:\/\/brookegeery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1256\/revisions\/1350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brookegeery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brookegeery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brookegeery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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