Dave! Dave! I’ve got a brilliant idea!

What is it, Fred?

Let’s make a QR code… right… but make it really hard to scan!

Brilliant idea, Fred! How?

We can stick it on a Taxi, so that you have to wait until it stops at a traffic light before you can scan it!

Ok, Fred, but I’m still concerned that the code will be too easy to scan.

Aha! That’s why we invert the colours!

Fred, you’re a genius. Let’s go and club some baby seals to death.

I… just…. WHAT?

Did no one test this campaign? It’s completely unreadable on the half dozen QR scanners I tried. Perhaps there is a mythical phone which can render it, but I doubt it. The campaign (for an event in October 2011) had a total of fifteen clicks.

Of those clicks, only 10 were from the QR code. Ten!

I took the liberty of inverting the code back to the correct colour layout. Unsurprisingly for such a hopeless code, IPEXPO’s website isn’t mobile friendly.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to bang my head against a brick wall.

If you need a professional QR code consultation – please contact me. PLEASE!

Terence Eden specialises in helping organisations craft amazing QR campaigns. Contact Terence for a consultation

Wander around the London Underground and you’re likely to see safety posters from the British Transport Police (BTP). This is the first one that I’ve seen with a QR code on it.

It’s a fairly good poster. A good call to action, a URL in case your phone can’t read QR codes, and the code itself is well sized and has a high level of error correction.

Scanning the code, however, leads to a rather disappointing user experience.

A non-mobile mobile site

Here’s what the user sees when they land on the BTP’s “mobile” site.

The site is incredibly poorly formatted. It is evidently not designed for mobile, nor has it been tested on a wide range of phones.

No viewport has been set, meaning most phones will show the site zoomed out.

The images are all fixed at 480px wide, so any phones with a smaller screen may have difficultly rendering the page.

The Videos

The videos themselves are well produced, but almost totally unsuitable for mobile. The videos are around 30 seconds long – yet weigh in at around 3.6MB!

Even on 3G, that’s a a long wait for the file to download. On 2G? Forget it.

The files aren’t streamed – they have to be downloaded. Finally, the resolution is fixed at 640*360, and so the videos are not adapted to each device’s screen resolution.

Click To Call

If you are the police, you probably want people to be able to phone you. So the BTP place their phone numbers on their site.

There’s only one problem – you can’t click on the number to call them! So, you’re left in the annoying situation where you either have to remember the phone number, or borrow another phone to call them.

Making telephone numbers “click-to-call” is really easy. Literally, all you need to do is write
<a href="tel:0800405040">Call us on 0800 40 50 40</a>

Hey presto! Users can click on your phone number and place a call from their mobile phone.

The Stats

As I discussed in an earlier post, using a URL shortner means that anyone can see your QR statistics!

So let’s take a look at how the BTP have done.

At the moment, they’re averaging 12 scans a day for this poster (I don’t know if other posters have the same code – I suspect so). Naturally, iPhone is at the top of the scans, with BlackBerry following close behind.

Is this a good result? I don’t know. If there was just a URL on there, how many visits would it get?

Making It Better

This is such a brilliant idea for a QR poster campaign. With only a little work, it can be made really useful for Londoners.

• Create a responsive mobile site.
• Use click-to-call for all phone numbers.
• Optimise the videos for mobile download and viewing.
• Consider streaming the videos – perhaps using a service like YouTube.

If you would like a bespoke QR consultation, contact me.

You feel the same way too, don’t you?

What? You don’t? But… but….

What else could explain the advertising industry’s love of putting QR codes as close to the floor as possible?

Be Careful What You Wish For

Of course, if going too low is bad…

Here’s a typical product display stand with QR code placed on it.

There’s no “call to action”. Nothing to say what the code is, how I use it, or why I should scan it. Does it lead to a video demo? To a voucher? What?

But, that’s not the worst of it. Notice how small it is? There’s lots of space which could be used – instead it’s barely 20mm across. That in itself wouldn’t be too bad – except all these displays are about half-a-metre behind glass!

Even with my multi-megapixel cameraphone pushed right up against the window, I wasn’t able to get a scan on these codes. I wonder if any phone on the market would be able to read them.

Luckily, I found one which was close enough to the glass for me to scan.

They’ve used a fairly short URL, so the code isn’t too dense. I’m pleased to say it swiftly redirects to a mobile friendly site.

It’s unfortunate that the first item I have scanned has an “out of stock” error. The rest of the mobile site is rather good.

Fixing The Mistakes

This campaign fails 3 of my 10 Commandments of QR Codes. Specifically

I. Your QR code shall be large enough and clear enough to scan easily.
VII. Your QR code shall have a sufficient call to action.
VIII. Your QR code shall be tested.

Don’t Make The Same Mistakes

If you’re considering a QR campaign contact me and arrange for a consultation.
I work with companies large and small to help prevent you from making these sorts of mistakes.

Seriously, pack up the tools of your trade, go home, pour yourself a stiff drink, and weep at what you have done.

The Poster

Here’s a fun game for all the family! Play “spot the QR code” on this poster…

Bzzzzzt! Time’s up! Did ya see it? What? No! How could that be?

Let’s zoom in…

There! Right beside the warnings of “mild peril” lurks the QR code. Tiny, overly dense, and with no call to action.

Try scanning it. To make things slightly easier, I’ve given you a straight shot of the code.

Not easy, is it?

The Contents

It’s usually best to use a short URL in a QR code. The smaller the data, the less dense the QR code, the bigger you can print each individual square.

Let’s look at what this code contains

http://www.findanyfilm.com/Take-Shelter-custom_film~39285?
   utm_source=sonypictures&
   utm_medium=QRcode&
   utm_campaign=takeshelter  Cinema_BookNow

A few things to note.

• This code is ridiculously long.
• Is all that tracking data really needed?
• There is a space which hasn’t been URL encoded as “%20″

The Site

Let’s assume that you’ve seen the QR code. And that you’ve managed to scan it. And that your browser will open such a malformed URL. What reward awaits you? Something good, right?

Nope. This festering pile of shit.

A non-mobile site, flash heavy, poorly thought out, abomination of a site.

But, let’s play along and try to find a screening near me.

Oh great. A pop-up.

So, no easy way to find a screening, see a trailer, or buy tickets. Just what is the point of this site?

If I were one for conspiracy theories, I’d say this marketing campaign was generated by someone who hates QR codes and wants them to fail. Putting Hanlon’s razor in to action, I think this is more likely the work of someone who just doesn’t understand what they are doing.

If you’re interested in avoiding this sort of catastrophic blunder – give me a call. I can work with you to craft a QR campaign which doesn’t suck.

I’m not a massive fan of short URL services like bit.ly – but for shrinking the text you want to fit in a QR code, they are invaluable.

I want to take a look at a particularly interesting example from Nat West Bank.

The Poster

Despite having the QR too close to the ground (more of that in a later blog post) this seems like quite a good campaign.

The QR code is large and clear, it’s not too dense, and the copy shows the app is available on Android, iOS, and BlackBerry. A single scan on any device should redirect the user to the correct destination.

The Scan

This is where things start to fall apart.

The URL

I know some of the guys behind ScanBuy. It’s a good service, but I don’t think it’s suited to this usage.

http://SCN.BY/9T7N6HN0RDQPUO

1. No “https”. Users are being trained not to trust banking URLs unless they go via SSL. I wonder if people will notice on QR codes?
2. It’s not a Nat West domain. How does a user know that this goes to the real app and not some mobile-malware?
3. Nonsensical path. At the very least, ScanBuy should let this be customised to scn.by/NatWestApp or similar. That way, people looking through their history will know what the URL is meant to go to. (See scanning while underground).

That said, the code does successfully redirect users to the correct app store to download the app.

What I Would Do

I would use a url like

https://natwest.com/GetApp

It’s the same length as the previous, is human readable, and is secure. If Nat West can’t run the redirection and analytics service themselves, it could easily redirect to ScanBuy to do the heavy lifting.

The Good

One thing to say, if a non-compatible device scans the code, they get taken to Nat West’s mobile friendly site.

the world’s first ad-supported Kindle, going on sale within Target and Best Buy locations for $114. That represents a gentle $25 savings compared to the price of today’s cheapest Kindle, but those 2500 pennies don’t come free — you’ll be asked to endure “advertisements on the bottom of the device’s home page and on its screen savers.”
Engadget

Can It Work?

On the strength of the current evidence – no.

Browsing on the Kindle’s web browser is a slow and frustrating experience. It’s slow at downloading, takes ages to render, and scrolling is a nightmare. That’s ok – it’s primarily a book; not a browser.

But that’s not the worst thing. The worst thing is that advertisers just don’t know how to advertise on this medium. Take a look at the crap that goes on in mobile advertising. Do you think that advertisers will have the wherewithal to make a Kindle-friendly advert?

Not even Amazon can make it work. Take a look at this.

While browsing on the Kindle, I spotted this banner advert. What struck me was that the advertiser had clearly target the Kindle – probably via User-Agent sniffing. Intrigued, I clicked on it, only to be greeted with this monstrosity.

Yes – not even Amazon’s store renders well on the Amazon Kindle. While the mobile version of the site may work, there would still be no way to buy the book. Even if it did, I’m in the UK and can’t buy from the American store.

So, I ask again: If Amazon can’t write a website which works well on a Kindle – what makes you think an advertiser can?

What Would Work?

Many years ago – I was in discussion with the people who almost got the Kindle on their mobile network. There were a number of different business models floated – many completely unsuitable – but some only waiting for the right time.

1. The hardware for the Kindle is (reasonably) expensive as an upfront cost.
2. Most customers are mathematically challenged

Would people buy the Kindle in the same way that they buy a phone? Give customers a £111 Kindle FREE! (on a £9.99 per month contract).

Of course, the missing piece of the puzzle is what you get for the £9.99. Amazon book tokens? Free OTA podcasts? Subscriptions to newspapers?

I don’t have the answer – but I suspect Amazon wants to lower the cost of the hardware and increase the attach rate (number of Kindle books a user buys).

Why not do an offer similar to this.

• Kindle costs £111
• Comes with £200 worth of Amazon book tokens!
• The Amazon vouchers are in the denomination of 2*£10, 6*£7.50, 20*£5, 35*£1
• Or, perhaps the vouchers are in the form “50% off”, “25% off”, etc
• Vouchers are provided to the user over 12 months
• Vouchers expire after 3 months

The purchase price is all of a sudden much more palatable given the FREE vouchers. The discounts could probably be eaten by some publishers – or at least partially. The “risk” of buying an eBook is significantly reduced in the eyes of the customer – leading to an increased attach rate. Most customers aren’t going to use the full value of the vouchers.

Just sticking on banner adverts for perfume seems so… lazy!

Amazon’s Strengths

Amazon has a great record on “people who bought X also liked Y”. Why not bring that to Kindle? Instead of this incredibility lame screen…

…why not recreate this page for the 21st century?

Amazon has my credit card details and my address – they don’t need advertising from third parties!

• Finished reading Pride and Prejudice? Buy the DVD!
• Enjoyed Brick Lane? Get this great balti dish set delivered to your door!
• Wow! Oryx and Crake was pretty good huh? Download the sequel – The Year of the Flood

Subsidising the hardware cost with enforced banner adverts is a flabby and uninventive 1990′s business model. It also places the Amazon brand at risk of a crappy user experience.

I don’t think readers will welcome a turgid little banner for perfume. But I think they will embrace relevant and contextual advertising which adds value to their reading experience.

Wonga, the payday loan company, has found itself in a bit of hot water recently. They’ve had an Advertising Standards Authority adjudication against one of their adverts and they have raised the ire of Stella Creasy MP over their sponsorship of the Tube on New Years.

Even London’s mayor has said

people should be aware of the extortionate rates of interest that they can charge and people should not enter into irrational or unwise debt obligations

Now, I’m not convinced that payday loan companies are bad per se. If you need a few hundred pounds to avoid being thrown out of your home, these companies can provide a service which traditional banks can’t – or won’t – provide. That said, taking out a loan is something which should not be done lightly – and should only be done with the full facts at your disposal.

That’s why I’m confused by Wonga’s latest advertising campaign on mobile. Here are three adverts that I’ve spotted recently.

None of them display the APR – even though there is sufficient room to do so.
I suppose they could argue that they are advertising the Wonga Android App – not a loan. Therefore they don’t need to display the APR. I’m not convinced that’s a sound argument – more on that in a moment.

Within the marketplace description, there’s no mention of the APR.

Only one of the screenshots mentions the APR.

I’ve been taking a look at the CAP guidelines and recent adjudications, and the OFT FAQs on this subject and I’m left a little confused as to whether hiding the APR in this way is allowed.

Is it simply enough to say

“I’m not advertising [banned product] – I’m advertising an app that lets you get it.”?

If so, I think the guidelines need to change.

Two Questions

1. Are Wonga in breach of the ASA and OFT codes governing advertising for financial products?
2. Does this trivialise money lending?

I’m not saying that Wonga are in breach of the rules. I don’t even wish to raise a complaint against them. I will be asking the ASA and OFT for clarification on this matter.

As for the app itself, it’s reasonably well crafted. While it’s great that you can do so much with a phone, I remain a little uneasy about applying for complex financial products while on the bus. But perhaps I’m getting old. I’m sure that next year I’ll be applying for a mortgage via a mobile website and not think it anything strange.

Now With Extra Irony

In one of those delightfully serendipitous moments, a Wonga advert popped up as I was reading Stella Creasy’s tweets.

This time, on a poster for high-brow art-house flick The Mechanic.

Quite close to the bottom of the poster – so low, I had to kneel to scan it – is a QR code.

Scan it and it takes you a mobile friendly trailer on YouTube.

Issues

It wouldn’t be a Terence Eden blog post if I didn’t criticise the approach taken by the advertisers.

• QR code is far too low down – who wants to stoop to scan (other than nerds like me)?
• No call to action. No one knows what this QR codes goes to until they scan it. You need to give someone an incentive to scan. Here’s a very quick mock-up I’ve made to show how I think it should be.
• 
• Short URL – even if you do scan the code, you still have no way of knowing where it’s going. The qrs.ly service is provided by QR Stuff who don’t offer editable URLs. Their premium service does offer all sorts of statistics and other options. But for a customer facing code, a friendly URL would probably be better. http://qrs.ly/Trailer for example.

So, overall, great use of a QR code to direct people to the trailer – but a little more effort on the call-to-action would have made people much more likely to scan the code and view the trailer.

A nice simple set of banners.

Let’s gloss over the missing apostrophe in this one though…

Which leads to the Groupon mobile friendly site.

Well formatted mobile site. Free text field for an email address and a drop down list of cities they support.

There’s no notion of what they’ll do with the email address – which is very naughty – but the worst is yet to come.

After filling in the form and clicking “Discover Deals” this is what the customer gets.

*sigh* So depressing. Why do this?

If you don’t have a mobile friendly site, don’t run a mobile advertising campaign.

At the bottom of tonight’s Evening Standard is this advert from Debenhams.

Debenhams QR Advert

The QR code immediately caught my eye and – being the saddo that I am – I immediatley whipped out ZXing and scanned it in.

Debenhams QR Code

What goodies would it net me? A URL to visit their mobile site? Contact details for a Christmas order line?

db::LIST::static-0011445

Let me repeat that…
“db::LIST::static-0011445″

Mean anything to you? Nope? Me neither. I even read it with another scanner to see if my phone was going bonkers. It was not.

“db::LIST::static-0011445″ What on earth can that mean? It was then that I noticed the instructions next to the code.

Debenhams QR Instructions

What? Let me count the ways this is wrong…

• What on earth does “shop the ad” mean? Is it a typo for “scan the ad”?
• Roughly 5% of Debenhams customers have an iPhone – why is this restricted just to them?
• I don’t know how many people have already downloaded the Debenhams app – but fewer than 500 people have rated it. With an average rating of 3* – it’s unlikely many more will grab it.

The customer interaction is currently “Do I have an iPhone (probably no). Have I installed the app (probably no). Can I install this 6.4MB app while I’m on the train (probably no). Now let me scan the advert.”

What kind of response rate is that likely to get?

How They Should Have Done It

Here’s how the code should work – in my opinion.

• Point the code at http://m.debenhams.com/0011445 – that way, the 95% of phone which aren’t iPhone will have somewhere to go. If there isn’t a mobile Debenhams site – make it redirect to an advert hosted on YouTube.
• If an iPhone visits that URL, check to see if they have the application installed. If they don’t, redirect them to the iTunes store.

Pretty damn simple.

Remember – most of your customers don’t have the same phone as all the cool kids in your marketing department. Not all your customers live and breath your brand – don’t expect them to have your application on their phone.

In the left corner – John Lewis sporting a QR Code.
In the right corner – the Donkey from Shrek going into battle with an MS Tag.

FIGHT!

QR Code

This use of QR code leaves me a little conflicted.

On the one hand, the code is too small and, either in resizing or printing, has become distorted.

On the other hand, the code resolves to a great mobile site.

You can also read Nick Burcher’s analysis of this campaign.

MS Tag

I’ve previously railed against the MS Tag. In this advert, the tag isn’t the problem – the destination is.
The tag is well presented – although the disclaimer text doesn’t need to mention messaging charges.

Scanning the tag with Microsoft’s proprietary reader (assuming it’s available for your phone) takes you to this rather hopeless Facebook page.

That’s right. The tag points to the WWW page of Facebook – rather than the mobile site! The video is flash based, meaning many phones won’t play it – including Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7.

Trying to playback the video is a jerky affair – and not helped by the fact that the video doesn’t take up the full screen of the player.

The advertiser really should have pointed to a mobile friendly video site like YouTube or Vimeo.

Conclusion

Despite the weakness of the MS Tag campaign, this is not the fault of the tag itself. Pointing to a useless destination is possible with either technology.

Both tags scanned quickly on my devices – although the QR code should have been bigger and clearer.

Finally, it’s interesting to note that neither tag is particularly well integrated with the advert.
John Lewis could have placed the QR code as one of the boxes of the Christmas tree. The MS Tag is shunted to the side with no real consideration of how it fits in with the rest of the creative.

Overall, while it’s heartening to see 2D tags going mainstream, advertisers need to work harder to ensure that their tags mesh well with the advert and that the destination is always mobile friendly.

Being the curmudgeon that I am, I want to point out a couple of rather glaring flaws in its execution.

Contrast

See if you can scan in the code on this image. The image links to Nick’s site if you want the full resolution version.

I tried several different phones and scanners and wasn’t able to get the code to scan. This is because QR codes are designed to be black and white. As I’ve explained before, most QR readers will assume light colours are white and treat them as a background image. This means that many reader just won’t be able to scan the code.

I’ve made the contrast much higher which has resulted in a more readable code.

Content

The next troubling flaw is the content present on the site. It appears to be a flash game of Pong.

While I’m no fan of the iPhone, excluding it from your campaign doesn’t seem like a smart move.

Trying to capture your visitors’ details is a great idea – but doing it on a tiny flash screen is a usability disaster.

Lessons Learned

1. Test your QR code on as many scanners as possible. Especially if you’re doing something “interesting” with it.
2. Test your site on as many phones as possible. Watch people interact with the site and see what changes you should make before setting it live.
3. Reduce the data in your QR code. Lacoste are using “http://www.lacostechampionship.com/” – they could save themselves ~40 bytes to make a smaller, more readable code by using “http://lacostechampionship.com”

Clicking the advert takes you to your phone’s dial screen with British Gas’s phone number ready to dial. (This goes via an ad network so they can count hits.)

This is pretty good, they’re redirecting phones to the following URL

tel:08081205054

The tel: schema is close to universal. Any phone which can see that advert can also call that number. Great! Right?

Wrong!

When Is Free Not Free?

It may surprise you to know that “freefone” numbers often aren’t free to call from a mobile. The reasons are a little arcane – but it means that any 080 number will cost your callers. Calls to 080 numbers generally do not come out of a customer’s inclusive minutes.

So, using an 080 number will not be free. Kinda defeats the purpose of buying a “freefone” number, doesn’t it? Especially on a campaign targeted to mobile users.

Where Are You?

Secondly, British Gas have assumed that anyone viewing this advert is based in the UK. Unless their geo-targeting is very good, they may well be showing this to people anywhere in the world.

If your customer is roaming, an 080 number isn’t likely to connect to the UK call centre.

What To Do?

There’s a really easy way to solve the set of problems which British Gas have with this advert.

1. Use an 03 number.
2. Use +44 at the start of UK phone numbers.

03 Numbers

OfCom have created a phone code which allows a mobile caller to use their inclusive minutes even when calling a non-geographic number.

From What are 03 numbers?

Ofcom introduced UK-wide 03 numbers as an alternative to chargeable 08 numbers, such as 0870.

These new numbers allow organisations to have a single national point of contact without consumers having to pay extra to call them.

Calls to 03 numbers cost no more than a national rate call to an 01 or 02 number and must count towards any inclusive minutes in the same way as 01 and 02 calls.

These rules apply to calls from any type of line including mobile, BT, other fixed line or payphone

Fully Qualified Addressing

The ITU have a recommendation for how to write telephone numbers unambiguously (E.123). It recommends using the country code. Essentially, when making a click-to-call phone number for the UK, make sure it starts with +44.

What Should It Look Like

Ideally, British Gas should be using a number like: 03069 990123.
Written in the correct international notation: +44 3069 990123
So, the final link would be

tel:+443069990123

That way, their callers – wherever they are – won’t be paying extra to contact them.

(Oh, don’t worry, that number is reserved by Ofcom for testing and drama usage.)

Feedback – 16/11/2010

Just had this in from Mary McEneaney the Online marketing manager for British Gas…

Thanks for taking the time to review our mobile advertising and you raise a good point on the use of “free” telephone numbers. Based on this feedback we’re going to change the number to a 03 number

(Quoted with permission)

That’s great news! Thanks to Mary and the team at British Gas for being so responsive to feedback.

Easy A is new film aimed squarely a the youth market.  Perfect fodder for mobile advertising.

Cute little advert, doesn’t say what it will link to, but other than that, not bad.  So let’s click through and see what happens.

Sweet! YouTube has an excellent mobile optimised site.  The ability to share the video on Facebook and Twitter is sure to make this baby go viral. Right? Right?

As the kids say, WTF?

Sony Pictures have deliberately disabled mobile playing for their video.  As far as I can tell, for all their videos.

All is not lost, though.  Helpfully, someone has been very naughty and illegally uploaded the video for us all to enjoy.

Lessons Learned

• Always test your advert – especially on the platforms for which they’re intended.
• If you’re a major movie studio and you don’t want your content pirated – make it easily available.