I have a few shares in Standard Life.
They are my scant reward for having taken out endowment policies with them back when “you couldn’t lose” with an endowment mortgage.
(FFS).
Those endowment policies made me a Standard Life member/owner back when it was a mutual organisation.
The process of demutualisation turned me from member to shareholder.
And now, twice a year, I get a dividend cheque in the post.
Said cheques are for tens of pounds rather than hundreds.
A nice little bonus.
But not the kind of bonus that buys you a holiday.
Not even the kind of bonus that pays for a week’s groceries.
And certainly not the kind of bonus that figures in my annual financial planning.
But a bonus nonetheless.
QR codes are like my Standard Life shares.
You wouldn’t want to depend on them as part of an annual plan.
You wouldn’t even want to depend on them as part of a campaign plan.
QR codes are inherently independable.
You shouldn’t expect to derive “marketing salary” from QR codes.
But they might give you the occasional nice little bonus.
It might cost a brand nothing to add a QR code to its packaging.
In which case it wouldn’t matter if no-one ever scanned it.
But if they did and, in so doing, liked the brand’s Facebook page or viewed the brand’s YouTube content or whatever, that would be a bonus.
A little bonus.
That’s all that QR codes are.