Are QR Codes Here to Stay? Here's Why They're Critical to Brand Experiences. If a customer's experience is clunky, uninteresting or not shareable, people will not come back to do it again. This is where QR codes can change the game.
By Gabe Miller Edited by Micah Zimmerman
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Welcome to the new, new thing. Some say it's the new television or radio. Some say it is the new out-of-home experience. Others call it the new way to experience a brand.
There is certainly no shortage of steroid-injected, turbo-charged descriptions for this amazing, revolutionary technology. So, just what is this radical disrupter, this global game-changer that we're talking about here?
Ladies and gentlemen, drum roll, please! It's the humble cereal carton, a can of soda, a box of washing powder.
Welcome to the brave new world of scannable technology
Picture the scene:
A mom goes into a grocery store and purchases a cereal box. Scanning that box's QR code with her phone gives her useful information like sugar, fat and vitamin content. The code gives those important health-related things on the back of the box — that maybe we don't read as much as we should — all neatly laid out on her screen to reflect her key interests and concerns.
Related: How Dynamic QR Codes Became an Essential Tool For Every Business Out There
Now maybe that cereal box comes home to two kids aged 12 and 13 playing on their iPads.
One of the kids scans the same QR code on the box when they are having cereal and gets a game from that cereal brand tailored specifically to them, while the other child gets to participate in another competition. That humble everyday cereal box has just served as a portal for three different people at three different times.
For any brand, the Holy Grail is talking to the right person at the right time and place with the right message. And this is what scannable technology can deliver. It can talk to a Gen Z consumer in London on Friday night with a message aimed specifically at them and then employ a different language to communicate with a Gen Xer in New York at work on a Wednesday lunchtime, all through the simple action of scanning.
Truly one-to-one television
My generation grew up with television shows like Seinfeld and Friends — shows with great storytelling and comedy. But back then, there were fewer mediums, so you got large audiences.
Now things are much more fragmented, so, as a brand, you must be very honest with yourself and ensure that the content and information you give the user is spot on. Because if that experience is clunky, uninteresting or not shareable, people will not come back to do it again.
In this way, scannable technology forces the brand to really understand who it is from the get-go while allowing it to demonstrate what it stands for in more personal ways. You can take more risks, but you must still be true to yourself.
Take, for example, a multinational company that works with a big catalog of music artists. Imagine that company being able to tailor a certain pop artist's message to a particular kind of audience for one of its brands and then using a different artist to connect another of its brands with an altogether different audience, all enabled under the company's brand umbrella. Using this approach, each of the company's brands could have their musical genres, all triggered by a simple QR code on a can.
Related: How Menu QR Codes Became an Essential Tool For Every Restaurant And Bar
Admittedly, people get a little hung up on QR codes. They think, 'Well, that's what I used during COVID to get my digital menu,' or 'It's the thing that helps me unlock the gate to my child's preschool.'
It's seen as a utility, not what it is: a portal that can open a whole new world of possibilities. In the future, that trigger is likely to be something other than a QR scan — it could be the new Apple headset, for example.
And just think about how it might work in the B-to-B world.
You walk into the lobby of a company, and the sculpture or digital screen behind the reception becomes a trigger sharing information about the company's values and culture. It could create a whole new experience for employees. At a time when companies are struggling to entice people back into the office, this sort of exclusive, location-based, time-stamped experience could be vital to winning hearts and minds.
Your glasses focus on the sculpture, and immediately it's talking to you, building a relationship. It's telling you things you need to know: 'Hey, there's free pizza at 5 in the canteen, and we've got a guest speaker from Vogue dropping in at 5 o'clock to give a talk on the roof garden'. Just think about how that changes how you feel about your employer, about your place of work.
We're still only in the foothills of understanding scannable technology's potential and application. But one thing we can be certain of right now is that the amount of customized content that will be needed once it is unleashed will be exponentially huge. Some of it will be produced by AI, some by advertising agencies.
Our job as a branding agency will be to guide what that content should say, how it should feel, and what it should sound like, to create that unique relationship with users, and to build these new worlds of one.
Because this is a revolution, and it won't be televised.
It will be scanned.
