A Little Drama Won’t Hurt The QR Code Campaign

Leave it to America to blow things up with added drama. And they also have the amazing ability to make things look and feel larger than life. Just yesterday, I was writing about how companies like Nordstorm and Phillips and Company raised the bar by making their QR Codes so huge that satellites can scan them. Yes, and they have placed it on roofs of buildings – this takes not only great imagination but I can only envision that it took a lot of effort, resources and mullah as well. 

It is not a bad thing, don’t get me wrong, and we can’t be more excited about the future of QR Codes, not only in this country, but in this world. 

These companies are going about it the right way because the only way to make QR Codes interesting is to blow things up…and to add to the scoop, in comes Augmented Reality, which probably should be bosom buddies with QR Code technology. The reason I am saying this is because I can only imagine so much interactivity, interesting stuff and magic that can be done with QR Codes. 

Let’s just say that you are standing right there, in the middle of New York City, and you are staring at a male model on a poster. Right there, everything is static but there is a small QR Code right there at the bottom of the poster that said, ‘Let me talk to you, scan me’. You have a smartphone with a QR Code reader installed, would you scan it just because you are curious (the fact that the model is gorgeous is beside the point, let’s not sidetrack)?

The idea is that when a smartphone owner scans the QR Code, the model comes to life on the mobile phone and actually starts talking to the smartphone user. 

Aurasma is a UK-based company and it delving right down into this technology, merging QR Codes with Augmented Reality and they are offering a mobile app for free…so far reporting more than two million downloads so far. However, according to sources, the app is only workable on an iPhone and not on other smartphones like Android or Blackberry. Consequently, a similar campaign was done up for Dunhill and then Blippar did campaigns for other large brand names like Jack Daniels, Tesco and Cadbury. 

This is amazing stuff and the way I see it, QR Code technology is not going away. Not if these advertisers and amazing agencies have anything to say about it.