QR Codes, Advertising’s Crop Circles
I was brushing my teeth this morning, thinking about my portfolio - what to leave in for now, what to set on fire and throw off a cliff - and found myself revisiting an old idea that I hope to work on in the near future.
An idea that involves QR codes.
Yes, QR codes - the same things that everyone (some people?) poops out a few garbage ideas for and flushes because they are QR codes.
This is not to say that there are no examples out there somewhere on the webternets/life that showcase QR codes in the most brilliant way known to man (like the one I saw in New York by Sport Illustrated - a picture of a hot swimsuit model featured a QR code with a headline that read, “Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” but I’ve not seen it. I don’t think anyone has. (The Sports Illustrated one isn’t BRILLIANT.)
The only thing I know for sure is that companies use them to link to websites. Cool.
This is what I think: QR codes are a conspiracy.
Question:
How is it possible that we have yet to find an amazing way to implement these things and make them an integral part of any fabulous, ready-for-hire portfolio?
Answer:
QR codes are crop circles of the Advertising world.
What ARE those things?
If half of the people in the industry aren’t sure exactly what they are good for, the rest of the planet really doesn’t get it. Even if they do know what they ARE, they aren’t sure why they exist after they take a picture of one and are simply linked to that company’s website. Woop-dee-doo.
Who put them there?
Aliens.
Companies want you to believe that they are the ones responsible, but given their inability to use them correctly, who are they trying to fool?
Clearly QR codes are some highly elevated form of communication between aliens and big companies trying to get us to “engage” with their products and services. Once we do, we’re beamed some place far away, probed with cold steel, and our brain is wiped of any recollection of what just happened. QR codes make abductions without pesky UFOs a reality.
We will never see the true death of QR codes because we can’t remember what happens when we use one. And because we don’t remember our abduction, we don’t remember that we need to get rid of the thing that made it possible.
Nothing new will come of them, either. These invaders are the ones stalling any development of effective QR code usage. Aliens are in charge of making sure QR codes never do anything but boringly link to a website I could easily type into my browser. So they can butt-rape us and study our insides. And the rapists are probably just a screwy bunch of 8th-grader aliens studying for this week’s anatomy test. Chapter 9: The Digestive Tract.
What do they mean?!
Nothing. Everything. Nothing and everything.
They mean that you need to download something. And they mean that companies are making money from us at more than the cost of whatever it is they are selling. These COMPANIES are selling US to ALIENS.
Here we’ve been thinking that these QR codes are a thing of the (recent) past. We wouldn’t be caught dead showing off a case-study involving silly QR codes. But are QR codes just ahead of their time? Will we ever use them without an Independence Day type battle of Will Smith proportions?
For now one thing is clear. No one really understands them.
