Missing the Mark With QR - My Response To Jon Barocas

Jon Barocas, founder and CEO of bieMEDIA, recently made waves on Mashable when he blogged about Why QR Codes Won’t Last.  While I respect Mr. Barocas and recognize his success in marketing technology, I feel that he is significantly undervaluing QR codes and overvaluing his proposed alternative.  Here is why:

To begin, Mr Barocas makes the mistake of misquoting a recent study by comScore.  He states that “only 14 million American mobile device users have interacted with a QR code. In essence, less than 5% of the American public has scanned a QR code.”  However, if you follow the supplied link and read the actual study, you can see that it doesn’t say that at all.  First of all, 14 million makes up 6.2% of the mobile community.  Second, this is a snapshot of the number of QR codes scanned in a single month - June 2011, not a cumulative total.  Earlier in the year, Compete provided another study that looked at QR adoption among smartphone users.  They found that over 28% of smartphone users have used QR codes, with Android users leading the way with 48%.  Apple followed with 39%, and Blackberry struggling at 14%.  We have also seen a very large adoption rate of QR codes as they become more and more mainstream, so these numbers will only continue to grow.

Mr Barocas believes that one of the reasons for the perceived lack of QR adoption is the lack of positive visceral reactions to QR codes.  His alternative is to use mobile visual search (MVS) technology.  With MVS, you scan an image like a company logo or a tagline, and it uses the image as the key to download and process the marketing information.  I absolutely agree that the emotional response to visual stimuli plays a major role in the purchasing behavior of consumers.  However, I disagree that an image associated to brand (like a logo) would necessarily provide a better consumer response.  The behavior already associated with a QR code is to scan it.  There is no such behavior associated with a logo or tagline. Retraining consumer behavior is one of the most daunting tasks in marketing.

Mr Barocas also claims that MVS technology is inherently more secure than QR codes, and this is just plain wrong.  The exact same malicious practices that people can use to exploit QR codes can be applied to an MVS enabled image.

Finally, there is simply no open standard in place for MVS, and considering the complexity of the technology behind it, it will always be a proprietary tech.  QR succeeds because it is simple and free to use.  It doesn’t require a cloud based server to do the decoding or processing, everything can be done on the phone itself.  This allows any company to develop and distribute the scanning applications for people to use.  Other proprietary 2D bar codes that do require cloud services and specific apps, like Microsoft Tag, exist.  And they provide features that a simple QR cannot.  But they are not even in the same usage ballpark as QR codes because the cost doesn’t consistently outweigh the benefit.  MVS will always be a paid, cloud based, proprietary service, and therefore will likely never see the widespread adoption rate that QR codes do/will.

This isn’t to say that MVS doesn’t have a future.  I actually love the technology, and I can see many uses for it.  Think of a branded mobile trade show app that interacts with the company logos of participating booths and vendors.  Or a branded mobile app that will interact with an advertised event, like the Super Bowl commercial, or even the Super Bowl itself.  Think about the application of MVS at live sporting events.  Or in tourist attractions like the Mall of America or Disneyworld.  There are some amazing possibilities for MVS technology that I am excited for.  But it will never replace QR codes.  Instead, MVS will be its own marketing channel that exists under the mobile enhancement umbrella, much like Augmented Reality.  And I am excited to use it in the future.