shots 159: Q is for QR Codes

QR codes

Art directors the world over breathed a sigh of relief when Quick Response codes began losing their appeal to marketers. When it came to the worst ways clients could ruin the beautiful work they’d pored over for weeks, “make the logo bigger” had been replaced by “make the QR code bigger”. As said codes look like the dead-fly smattered bonnet of a white van after a lap of the M25 on a sunny day, this brought a whole new level of pain. The truth is, despite them being the modern equivalent of the CueCat – an invention so spectacularly moronic it must be Googled to be believed – QR codes are actually quite useful, it’s just that nobody uses them. Perhaps because they always seem more about tracking the effectiveness of ads than making our lives easier. Hilarious QR code fails here: wtfqrcodes.com.

Microsoft Bing

Ever heard someone say, “I’ll Bing it”? Us neither. Despite the brilliant 2010 integrated ad campaign by Droga5, Bing: Decode Jay Z, which impressed the hell out of award show juries, Microsoft’s search engine just didn’t impress the public. In fairness, when your rival is a brand whose name has become a verb, you’ve got your work cut out from the start. It’s a shame, because healthy competition often leads to improved products and apparently Bing is a decent engine. If you don’t believe us, Ask Jeeves.

Trying to convince people you don’t work in advertising

The headline on your ad-packed website reads: “We are not an ad agency.” You tell the press and your friends that you’re not in this game for the money, you’re only interested in doing great work and telling stories that will inspire people to live better lives. Then an FMCG client calls about a pitch and you spend the next six months, not to mention enough money to run a soup kitchen for a year, at their beck and call, hoping to win their business. Face it, you’re not fooling anyone. Money makes the world go round and you’re a slave to the big clients just like everyone else. And really, there’s no shame in that.

The (most recent) revival of 3D film

3D is almost as old as fi lm itself and, in well over 100 years of trying, no one has ever found a way to make a prolonged success of it in mainstream filmmaking. Why? Because it doesn’t contribute to cinema’s raison d’être: storytelling. Yes Gravity was good, but was it a worse fi lm in 2D? Stereoscopy is a gimmicky experience best employed on three-minute theme park rides along with moving seats and smoke machines. The most recent 3D cinema revival seems to have petered out. In the market where 3D may genuinely have had a chance – gaming, where the viewer is part of the story, and hence an immersive experience makes sense – VR is set to revolutionise the market instead. Perhaps this time 3D is gone for good.

The Publicis/Omnicom merger

Dark clouds were looming and the ad industry was about to be crushed by an almighty force from the skies, at least according to some commentators during the build-up to the proposed $35bn merger of advertising giants Publicis and Omnicom last year. It didn’t happen, apparently for numerous reasons, but in truth it would have been less The Empire unites with The Klingons and more Facebook meets Twitter, wouldn’t it?

Phone fingers

In a world of clouds, apps, software and data, it’s nice to see hardware solutions to the conundrums of living in the digital age. Music piracy, identity theft and cyber bullying all pale in comparison, of course, to the problem of unsightly finger smudges on cellphone touchscreens. In 2007, previously unknown and never-heard-from-since tech genius Philipp Zumtobel answered our prayers. He brought to market Phone Fingers, which were essentially condoms for your dirty digits that came in three sizes, four colours and cost about $10 for a bag of 25. (What do you mean you only want to put them on two fingers? That would look stupid!) Who knows how much money the enterprise cost Zumtobel, who had to publicly insist on the product’s legitimacy to pacify hoax theorists and eventually gave up on the brand whose social media presence had swelled to 19 Facebook likes. A holding page at phonefingers.com promises a new site is coming soon. For his sake, let’s hope not.

Twitter Peek

Phone Fingers were a terrible idea, but at least they were cheap. Twitter Peek was a mobile device with a full QWERTY keyboard that looked like a BlackBerry but functioned nothing like one. Released in 2009, it was designed and built for one purpose only: Twitter. Yep, an entire mobile device for using a single social network. Wait, it gets worse. It only allowed use with one Twitter profile, links displayed web pages in plain text, and it cost at least $100 plus an $8 monthly service subscription. In 2012 service for all the company’s devices was discontinued and the seven people who owned a Twitter Peek were devastated – presumably venting their frustration via Facebook.

Sony BMG CD copy protection

In 2002, a year after the introduction of the iPod, Sony was rightly worried about the impending MP3 revolution. But instead of focusing on anti-fi le sharing, chumps at the major record label poured money into pricey copy protection measures that made it impossible to rip a disc’s tracks to a computer. It took pirate masterminds all of five minutes to find a hack, achieved by drawing a line around the edge of the disc with a marker pen (no, really). Three years later Sony landed itself in scalding water when 22 million CDs installed antipiracy software on customers’ hard drives, even if permission was denied. Under pressure, Sony provided an ‘uninstaller’ that merely un-hid the program, added further software, created vulnerability issues and collected email addresses and personal data. They backed down in 2007, presumably after realising that CDs had become useful only as coasters.

Microsoft Zune

It seems Bill Gates just loves launching inferior products late into markets already sewn up by the opposition (see Bing). For five years Gates watched Apple refi ne the portable MP3 player and sell millions of the things before spending the next five years trying to compete with them. Microsoft’s Zune was released in 2006 and might have been an attractive alternative to the iPod if it hadn’t looked like a massive rectangular turd. Despite design revamps it eventually went the same way as all the other decent players made by brands like Creative that could compete with Apple’s tech but not its cool; you weren’t anyone in London if you hadn’t been mugged for your iPod.

A Jobs-less Apple

This year mankind came dangerously close to a crisis that had never been faced before: we nearly ran out of things to spend money on. Luckily a certain Californian tech company stepped in (again) to save the day with a product that starts at about $500 and goes up to over $20k, thus ensuring even those with the deepest pockets and the shallowest brains can join in the fun of bankrupting themselves for the sake of a watch that does… well we’re not actually sure what it does, but it doesn’t seem to be much more than an iPhone can do. It remains to be seen if Apple will prosper in the long term without Steve Jobs, but most consumers have been underwhelmed by the company’s output since his death. Fails have included automatic uploads of a U2 album to 500 million users’ devices without consent, let alone knowledge, but we have to admit we’re keen to see what comes next. There are rumours of a car and with Jony Ive still in charge of design, that’s an exciting prospect.