Mobile Marketing in the Wild:

After school yesterday, my daughter and I went to Jamba Juice. I spotted a really cute QR Code on the wall. The giant strawberry with a QR Code embedded in it was calling out to me to scan it.

If you know me at all you know I am not a big fan of scannable codes. In fact, I have had my new Samsung Galaxy SII Epic 4G Touch since November and have yet to even install a code reader app on it. The one on my Palm Pre was so painfully slow I never used it and when I did I wanted to bang my head against the wall.

I decided it was time to get one and start trying out some codes in the wild. After all, I do sign up for every text message campaign I see and, as you know, I learn a lot from these adventures in consuming mobile marketing.

Back at Jamba Juice, I snapped a couple photos of the poster for you guys to see. (My teen age daughter started pretending to not know me at this point.)

Then I headed to the Market to grab a “QR scanner” as recommended by the poster.

BTW, score 1 point for awesomeness in mobile marketing. Jamba Juice did a great thing by giving some direction on what to do with the code in case I didn’t already know.

They got a positive point also for having a cute QR Code. I mean, who really wants to look at a basic black and white one? Certainly not in giant size on the wall. And it wasn’t just the cute code either, they gave me compelling reasons to do it. As a Jamba Insider I could get “the latest scoop on juice concoctions and insider-only deals.” Giving a compelling reason is another positive point.

Then something happened that was not Jamba Juice’s fault, but it impacted their marketing efforts nonetheless. The App Market was not responding at the time. I couldn’t get to a QR scanner if I tried…and I was trying. Our juices came up, we had a few sips and my daughter waited for me semi-patiently for several minutes while I tried to download a scanner. No luck. We left without me scanning the strawberry code.

If I were a typical consumer, the story would have ended here and probably does many times for first time scanners around the country.

Instead I came home and after a bit headed back to the Market and downloaded the ScanLife Barcode & QR Reader app. I sent the photo of the poster to my email for me to download and get on this post. I scanned it from the email.

Now, here’s where Jamba Juice needed to make a bit of a change. The cute strawberry sent me to a full size website page to sign up for the insider program.

As you can see from this screen capture it was not legible for me. Yes, I was able to pinch and squeeze my way through the form filling in part, but I was annoyed.

If I was not trying to participate in this campaign to be able to report about it to you, I would have closed this illegible page without even hesitating. I don’t want to be an “insider” that bad.

Let me set this concept in stone here. The only device that can work a QR code is a mobile device. Any action that happens as a result of the code being scanned must be mobile centric. Period. The End. Do Not Pass Go.

The Jamba Juice cute strawberry code is almost a great campaign, but not quite because of the fact that the opt in page was not designed specifically to work on mobile.

Oh, and the fact that it has already been a day and half since I signed up and I have not received a welcome message via email or text yet.

I wonder if I am actually a “Jamba Insider” at all.

Additional Resources on QR Codes:

I highly recommend Roger Marquis’ site 2D Barcode Strategy for tons of great information about all kinds of 2d bar codes including QR Codes. And, if you are curious why I am not a big fan of QR Codes, you can read about that on my recent MobiBlueprint blog post, What’s all the fuss about QR Codes?. And, if you want to build and track your own QR codes, check out QR Stuff (affiliate link) – another excellent resource.