Very recently, BMO Capital Markets announced that they have decided to introduce QR Codes in some of the advertisements that will appear in The Wall Street Journal. Stating that they hope that more smart phone users can obtain rapid information about the ads appearing in the magazine will be useful for both users and the advertisers. The financial arm of the company says that their ads appear every Friday in the Money & Investment section and the QR Code will lead mobile phone users to the conference page and webcast mobile web page of their website. 

Citing that users had to either click on multiple links to get to the page before or remember an impossibly long URL to get to the web address, the QR Code will lead them directly to the page instead. 

Rick Kuwayti said that while some preferred to access the web pages directly from their personal computers or laptops, the introduction of QR Code caters to people who are always on the ago and it’s merely just another way of reaching out to their clients. 

The slow start in the U.S. is most probably due to the fact that not a lot of people saw the benefits of the QR Code technology despite its exponential use in Europe and some parts of Asia. Now that almost everyone is walking about with an image-capturing device strapped to their hips or tucked into their handbags, why not? 

It’s been said that it’s pure waste of potential given the fact that there’s so much more that’s possible with QR Codes apart from what it is being used for. With QR Codes, there is no lag time in terms of paper and electronic device. Everyone’s merely a picture away….so to speak. 

Although they concede the fact that other similar types of mobile marketing have worked wonders before, for example SMS marketing, it does not link the online world to the offline one as clearly. SMS marketing is probably a little cheaper than QR Code Marketing too but that’s just for now. The advantage of the QR Code is that it can be printed on literally everything that we can see with the naked eye and can be captured on a camera phone. 

This is what an SMS cannot do and if BMO sees potential in enhancing this initial QR Code campaign, there will be other initiatives in the very near future.