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The Top QR Code Fails of 2011

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December 29, 2011 by Todd Wasserman 

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This past year was a big one for the QR code as the mobile call-to-action surfaced in campaigns for The Home Depot, Taco Bell and other mainstream brands. In some cases, however, brands are adopting QR codes without thoroughly thinking through their application.

Looking back over 2011′s QR code campaigns, Mike McGuinness, VP of sales for QRblaster.com, a firm that generates QR codes, has identified five of the top QR Code fails of 2011. If you’re a marketer eager to hop on the QR code trend, you might want to learn from these negative examples:

1. Red Bull

Red Bull ran a campaign featuring subway ads with QR Codes. Sounds like a great idea until you consider that most subways don't offer mobile phone connectivity, making the codes inaccessible.

QR Code Fails

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Red Bull ran a campaign featuring subway ads with QR Codes. Sounds like a great idea until you consider that most subways don't offer mobile phone connectivity, making the codes inaccessible.

1. Red Bull

1

Continental also didn't fully think through the user experience. The airline made a QR code for its in-flight magazine, linking air miles without having to log-on to online accounts. When passengers scanned the codes (during takeoff or landing), they were directed to a page with two buttons and a pop-up window that was mostly off screen, ensuring that passengers wouldn't be able to click through.

2. Continental

2

This fail, which actually took place in 2010, featured a QR code on the team's Facebook Page. Unfortunately, you needed a proprietary scanner to actually activate the code.

3. The Washington Redskins

3

Esquire was singled out for featuring a QR code on a recent cover (not this one) that was positioned where the mailing label goes. Oops.

4. Esquire magazine

4

The QR code used to promote the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's classic album looked cool, but proved very hard to scan, especially when featured on billboards.

5. Nirvana's Nevermind 20th Anniversary Edition

5

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1. Red Bull

Red Bull ran a campaign featuring subway ads with QR Codes. Sounds like a great idea until you consider that most subways don't offer mobile phone connectivity, making the codes inaccessible.

 

---

 

2. Continental

Continental also didn't fully think through the user experience. The airline made a QR code for its in-flight magazine, linking air miles without having to log-on to online accounts. When passengers scanned the codes (during takeoff or landing), they were directed to a page with two buttons and a pop-up window that was mostly off screen, ensuring that passengers wouldn't be able to click through. 

 

---

 

3. The Washington Redskins

This fail, which actually took place in 2010, featured a QR code on the team's Facebook Page. Unfortunately, you needed a proprietary scanner to actually activate the code.

 

---

 

4. Esquire magazine

Esquire was singled out for featuring a QR code on a recent cover (not this one) that was positioned where the mailing label goes. Oops.

 

---

 

5. Nirvana's Nevermind 20th Anniversary Edition

The QR code used to promote the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's classic album looked cool, but proved very hard to scan, especially when featured on billboards. 

 

---

Walmart’s Black Friday Disaster: Website Crippled, Violence In Stores

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Josh Constine

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Fire sales turned into a firestorm for Walmart this morning as the company’s web servers buckled under Black Friday traffic. Shoppers from around the country waited until the middle of the night for sales only to experience broken checkout pages, emptied shopping carts, and login errors. This caused their desired items to go out of stock before they could buy them, leading to mass frustration and ill will towards the discount store chain. Meanwhile at its physical stores, 20 people were pepper sprayed by a fellow customer, and 2 people were shot outside separate locations. Walmart will need to sort out its servers in preparation for the upcoming Cybermonday blitz or it risks losing customers to Amazon.

We’ll let traditional news outlets cover the offline violence and focus on Walmart’s web fiasco. Disgruntled online shoppers flocked to the GottaDeal.com forums to voice complaints about Walmart’s website problems. It’s unclear exactly how widespread the issues were, but the forums had complaints coming in every minute at one point last from customers in Florida, Mississippi, and New York.

Many expected deals to go live at Midnight local time only to have to wait up until 3am EST. Visitors then feverishly filled shopping carts but suddenly found them empty when they went to checkout. Others were confronted with the error message “We’re having temporary difficulties arriving at the destination you requested”. Login problems also arose, with users being asked to enter their credentials when already signed in. One customer reported that they complained about the checkout disruption on Walmart’s Facebook Page but later found their post deleted.

The entire Walmart site does not appear to have crashed. By keeping the site up despite the issues, Walmart may have sought to conceal the errors and avoid press coverage of the discontent. Loyal customers said they hadn’t had such problems since 2006 when Walmart experienced a similar breakdown of its site. The company pulled in $418 billion in revenue during the 2011 fiscal year, so today’s disruption could have cost it a lot of money.

While it might be too late to save Black Friday, Walmart better be scrambling to fix its website for Cybermonday, the biggest online shopping day of the year, just 36 hours away. The corporation acquired two startups Kosmix and OneRiot this year and formed its Silicon Valley-based @WalmartLabs in an effort to improve its ecommerce offering. However, it’s competing with powerhouse Amazon, whose cloud hosting division may protect it from the outages that plagued Walmart today.

If the errors persist on Cybermonday, shoppers may seek out a more reliable ecommerce solution. When customers post “I’m so frustrated I’m going to cry” and “an hour and a half of nonsense. shame on you Walmart!”, something has to change.