Tagged: badvertising

How Not To Run An Interactive Advertising Campaign #TAP4offers

Public transport is a great way to assess the Zeitgeist. Watching commuters transition from iPhones to Samsungs, and from paper books to Kindles, really gives one a sense of how the world is changing. Advertising is also a great way to measure society; seeing lots of adverts for dodgy loan companies can give you an interesting idea about the direction of the economy.

I've been tracking the rise of QR codes in advertising for several years now. People keep asking me when NFC will take over for "boring" QR codes - based on the few live NFC examples I've seen in the UK, NFC will be trailing QR for several more years.

Let me talk you through TAP4offers' latest "effort".

The poster is fairly clear about what to expect - although I initially thought that I'd have to stretch to the top of the carriage to scan the NFC tag!
Tap4 Train

Thankfully, that's not the case. Beside every exit were these combined NFC / QR / SMS stickers.
Tap4 Train Door
The NFC tag and QR code each had a unique tracking URL, so the owner of the service (Gunars Vucens) can see which method is being used the most. Judging from the URL and the printed information, I would guess each train carriage has a unique code.

Once the code is scanned - this happens.
Tap4 Screenshot

What - as the kids say - The Fuck? I've no idea how much it costs to do a deal with South West Trains - but someone has wasted their money!

This is the same mistake that Clear Channel made on their QR/NFC posters.

Why bother with this? Seriously? What's the point of installing all these codes? They've been there for months - disappointing everyone who interacts with them.



This is the most ridiculous advertising product ever. It actually makes me angry: http://t.co/xokXd62RPy
20/03/2013 13:33 via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@richardtvaughan
Richard Vaughan


Tapped my phone on the @ offer tag on southwest trains but the offers are not that exciting. http://t.co/0zDGYyix71
04/03/2013 21:06 via Twitter for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite
@myconnectedlife
Colum Duffy

Despite the advertiser's promise of a relaunch, nothing seems to be happening with these codes.


New and upcoming #TAP4offers is due to change and expand rapidly in following weeks, keep and eye out! #nfc #tap4 #offers
03/05/2013 15:23 via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@GunarsTAP4
Gunars Vucens

Logo Problems

As well as the general uselessness of the destination, there is another flaw with the service.

Firstly, there's yet another NFC logo! Proxima's report to the GSMA already identified half a dozen common logos.
Proxama-Use-Cases-for-Mobile-NFC-fs8
GSMA NFC Logo, NFC Forum's N-Mark, ClearChannel's NFC Mark, etc. etc.

So, overall, a pretty pathetic effort.

If NFC is to overcome its significant obstacles - price, hardware requirements, lack of public awareness - the campaigns underpinning it must be better than this.

Train Tickets With QR Codes

No, I'm not talking about Masabi's innovative technology, but of this rather odd bit of advertising found on the back of a train ticket.
QR Codes on Train Tickets
There's no specific call to action - but there's not much space to play with. Let's give it a scan...
Train Tickets non-mobile friendly

*sigh* A non-mobile site. With an Adobe Flash plugin in the top right which won't work on any iPhones. Why on Earth do marketing companies insist on pointing phones to non-mobile sites. It really bemuses me. Stations rarely have good signal (too many people leads to local network congestion) and, besides, large sites are a right pig to use on a small screen.

Stats

I've blogged several times about using Bit.ly links in QR codes. With a little bit of hacking (adding at + character to the end of the URL) we can see how many people have been scanning the code.
QR Click Stats Rail

I don't know how many of these tickets have been printed. That might be a really good conversion rate - but I doubt it. I only noticed the QR code because someone had dropped their ticket and it landed face-down. Realistically, how many people look at the back of their tickets?

The best campaign in the world would fail if it's not put in front of an audience.

IPEXPO and the Unscannable QR Code

I recently overheard two advertising executives discussing their latest QR campaign. I jotted down what they were saying...

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!
Taxi QR code

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

Aha! That's why we invert the colours!
Inverted QR Taxi
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.

IPEXPO QR Statistics

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.
ipexpo website

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!

British Transport Police - Pickpockets QR Code

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.
BTP QR Poster

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.

BTP Mobile Site Screenshot 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.
BTP non click-to-call
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.
BTP QR Stats

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.

Kneel Before Your QR Master

You know what I love about the streets of London? The pavements are so clean. Many is the time I crawl around on my hands and knees - rubbing my trousers into the walkways of my beloved city. Hardly anyone kicks me up the arse, either.

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...