The 2012 Super Bowl has come and gone and while the show turned out to be a major success – as is the norm – the NFL’s somewhat ambitious mobile marketing experiment was not as popular with viewers as had been hoped. The yearly game is a major event for football fans, but it is also an opportunity for marketers to reach a huge number of people. Given the growing popularity of mobile marketing, advertisers had expected that QR codes would be well received. This was not the case, however, as many of the codes used simply did not work.
The 2012 Super Bowl Official Game Program was released prior to the big game. The 264-page booklet contains a wealth of information about the two teams that played in the game as well as certain aspects of this year’s event. The booklet also contains a variety of advertisements, many of which featured QR codes. Some of these ads cost companies more than $100,000. Unfortunately, many of the codes were not ready for use, thus they failed the test of consumers.
When these codes were scanned with a smart phone, they took consumers to websites that were not optimized for mobile viewing. These websites were, essentially, impossible to navigate with a mobile device. Some of the codes simply did not work, leading consumers to nothing. In the end, the mobile marketing experiment seems to have been a flop. If companies cannot devote more attention to the functionality of their mobile marketing campaigns they will not see the success that they are hoping for.
