No strategy for Canadian Political Parties and QR Codes
Mashable wrote an interesting article a couple of weeks ago about how QR codes could be one of the key pieces of technology that defines the 2012 US Presidential Election.
QR codes are those square bar code looking things that can be scanned by your mobile phone to give you access to content on your mobile browser. They act as a kind of bridge between the print world and digital realm. You can do all kinds of things with them (as you are basically embedding a URL whenever you generate a QR code), but as one of our clients said the other day,
We use QR codes because everyone else uses them, but we really don’t know how.
This is a common gap in the evolution of QR codes. The technology seems to have both suddenly appeared and drifted into the background. You may have seen them on movie posters, flyers or on wine bottles, but most of the time your eye just skips over them not realizing that those little black and white boxes actually DO something.
And now they are popping up in political campaigns. As George Alafoginis, a digital strategist for Washington D.C.-based New Media Strategies says,
What we notice in the political space is that it’s three to five years behind your normal corporate brand area. One of the exciting things is that we have the opportunity to close the loop between online activities and real-world events. We’re seeing individuals rely on their phones, and QR codes present an optimal framework for that. There’s an opportunity for campaigns to reach out to mobile-savvy individuals and transmit a message that will lead to an activation.
As we near the Canadian Provincial Election, I decided to see how our political parties stacked up when it came to the QR code landscape. From the outset it’s pretty dismal. We don’t need to analyse the NDP or the PC parties as, well, they decided to stick with the tried and true of Facebook and Twitter and skip QR codes altogether. But that may have been a smart move as it’s better to not include them in any campaign materials such as lawn signs if there is no strategy to support them.
The Liberal and Green Party on the other hand, have included them on their lawn signage, but it would appear as though they were smacked on as an afterthought with no real strategy.
Biking to work yesterday, I scanned the QR codes of Liberal Party Sarah Thomson and Green Party Tim Grant and they both simply took me to their respective websites. Not exactly user friendly, action oriented or message driven. I have an iPhone and I do like surfing the web, but not on a street corner for 20 minutes, browsing their website on my small screen. Realistically, you’ve probably got me for 1–2 minutes tops.
So for all the Parties, here are 3 starter ideas for using QR codes in the next election.
- QR codes could serve as an on-the-street campaign that instantly recruits supporters to speeches, visibility events and canvassing. The key is to make sure the QR code allows for action — such as connecting with a supporter or pledging to canvass.
- The candidate could solicit donations via a direct mobile QR transaction. The experience would also be social: the contributor instantly shares her donation across social networks and encourages friends to match her donation.
- QR codes could be a chance to get creative: Provide access to exclusive content, such as funny or moving videos, tweets or pics.
Above all remember that when someone scans a QR code it is scanned using their mobile device, so make sure that whatever page the QR code points to, it is optimized for a small screen. And please, please, don’t just send someone to your non-optimized website.
Remember to get out and vote October 6th.
