Guerrilla thinking

We don’t know what you think about it guys, but QR codes are an epic fail.
At the very early stage of their existence we were all excited to have a way to extended our reality and get deeper information on products, events and anything else.

But that was ages ago.
And at guerrilla thinking we strongly believe they are the past.

Sure, some old-style web marketing wannabe might be excited to sell a QR code campaign to its clients and some of those latter ones might be even more excited to try out what they think is the “next” thing.

But that doesn’t matter. Apart from those constantly living in the past year, people living and acting in the market today have to know (if they don’t know yet) that QR codes are not worth the money.

And here’s why.

1) GOOGLE SEARCH IS THERE AND READY IN YOUR HANDS

whatever a QR code can give you when you scan it, can be found in google.
Providing a good keyword to your clients on the pack and writing “google this” beside it will do the job perfectly and will be way much easier for them to be done.
QR Codes were cool, but that was before actual smartphone and google-performant devices. Geo-localized apps and mobile google search actually killed QR codes reason to be.

2) TWITTER HASHTAGS CAN DO BETTER

why would you wanna put a QR code on your pack when you can put an hashtag (#) and getting twitter users to look it up and contribute on the go?
The space you need to place the cryptic code can perfectly fit a twitter logo with the #.
And this one (as much as the keyword mentioned above) is even more rememberable than a the code (which actually does not reveal anything at all)

3) MOBILE VISUAL SEARCH IS WAY MORE INTUITIVE AND POWERFUL

the 2 points above refer to an action that you as a brand can take to give your clients the chance to deepen their knowledge of your product.
But is that really necessary these days?

Many smartphone will soon embed Mobile visual search functionalities.
Google is doing pretty much for this and its introducing this slowly to the market in order to improve it and go massive.

It’s called Google goggles. And here’s how it works.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Why would people want to open an app, scan a code and get to most of the times crap content?
QR codes are not rewarding. Neither in terms of what they deliver, nor in the way they do it. They were a good idea 10 years ago. But technology and people have changed.
And the possibilities now are way beyond them.
If you really want to connect a place, a product, a window, any item and make it work as a real-world-hypertextual-link you’d better consider other options that are closer to people’s habits and expectations.