Who the hell uses QR Codes?

I was reading through Belle magazine this morning – this is a higher end magazine covering interior design and beautiful apartments/homes.

One of the early ads (ie expensive placement) was this double-page spread:

My eye was caught by the QR code in the bottom right corner. I’m always amazed when companies promote a QR code – seems like a waste of good call-to-action real estate.

But this intrigued me – given they are advertising in a high end magazine, to a premium audience – what I wonder is their campaign goal?

So I opened up the App Store, searched for a QR code scanner app, installed it – since this is what you have to do in order to read QR Codes – and then scanned in the code.

Turns out it was a URL, and here’s the experience one receives when visiting the URL:

Outstanding.

I’m going to guess that no one even checked the QR Code destination – after all most people don’t even know to scan them, so the marketing manager who approved this is likely no different. But further, I’ll bet no one ever even checks the stats of how many scans the code gets.

Such as wasted opportunity.

Here’s a better idea – instead of the QR code, replace it with a special phone number. This is an Australian magazine, so it the number could be a 13 number. But have a number unique to this magazine, so you can track how many calls come from this particular ad placement. Test and measure.