SMS Marketing Blog

QR Code Advertising Fail

19th July 2011 - Posted by Derek Johnson in category Text Message Marketing #FAIL

Being in the mobile marketing space I get to see a lot of different types of mobile campaigns, some good, some bad. Every so often though I see a mobile campaign that makes even the bad ones look amazing. An example of one of these mobile campaigns is the one below from Community Color Mailer in Wisconsin. Excuse my french, but this is a complete fuck-fest of fails. Some of the most obvious fails of this ad.

1. QR code isn’t spelled “QRCode”.
2. No instructions on how to download a QR code scanner.
3. When you scan the QR code it takes you to a non-mobile enabled website.
4. They expect people to have a pen and paper available to write down the code.
5. This one takes the cake though… They expect a consumer to mail that code to them. I’m not talking about email though, I’m talking about regular mail, the kind of mail that the postman comes and picks up from your house, which requires one of those 44 cent stamps and an envelope.

I’m going to go out on a limb on this one, but I’m pretty sure the adoption of this campaign was low. How low? Lets say they distributed 50,000 of these to consumers, I would bet $100 that they didn’t get more than 10 people to participate. Really though, I will donate $100 to whatever charity Community Color Mailer wants if they can prove to me that more than 10 people participated in this campaign. It just isn’t happening…

Always remember the golden rule when planning and executing a mobile marketing campaign: Keep it simple. If you don’t, I will find you…

If you want to see more mobile marketing failures, check out our good friends at the website Mobile Marketing Fail, great resource for what not to do.