QR Codes And Print Media – Finger In The Dam?
I saw this newspaper ad this morning while waiting for my coffee. It was an advertisement by an estate agents who in fairness to them seemed to have pulled out every social media trick in the book to make their advert stand out from the rest and be interactive. It featured not only an actual Facebook like button but also a Facebook logo and the obligatory Twitter account but also a QR code that users could scan to get a more interactive view of the property in the advert. Now I’m not giving out about this ad in any way because at the end of the day it caught my eye and they are trying everything to make their advert cross platform and engage the end user in different ways.
What I am wondering is if the advertiser is trying so hard to find customers and spending huge money to take out a half page advert are there not smarter ways in which they could do it? I for example am looking to buy a house at the moment but I use a location aware App from Daft which has augmented reality features and lets you find houses nearby. Even if I see houses in ads like that one in the newspaper I’ll end up looking for them via the app.
QR Codes A Temporary Fix
QR codes are popping up all over the place and I can’t open a newspaper without seeing them on every page. Sure there are some brilliant ads like the one below but the worlds of print media and technology don’t mix in the long run. There is only a finite amount of interesting things you can do with QR codes and in the end I think publications would be better served looking at their own online strategy rather than trying to tread water in this area. Great as a short term interactive strategy but the long term picture of how their publications shift totally online should be the bigger concern.
