That QR Code Commercial
Of course, we’re talking about the Coinbase commercial. The advert itself was said to have cost $14 million and it showed a QR code bouncing around the screen for a whole 60 seconds. If you’re an old-school gamer then you may have felt the familiar tug of the classic arcade game, Pong, as you watched.
However, then the realization hit that the commercial was asking you to do something. You could almost hear all of the viewers start to shout as they grabbed their phones and instantly started to bring the Coinbase information into their worlds. The result was 20 million hits to their website.
A few years ago, this was probably unheard of. A QR code? Really? Believe it.
The Super Bowl commercial is of course a high profile example, but right now, we’re seeing QR codes everywhere. On TV. At the cinema. In restaurants. Even some of the biggest brands in the world are using QR codes – with Starbucks, Netflix and Nike being just a few names in the mix.
QR codes can also be of huge value in the world of higher education.
QR Codes Are Making a Comeback, But When Were They First Used?
Let’s dive into the history books to understand QR codes a little better. Standing for ‘quick response’, QR codes first came on the scene way back in the nineties. The first QR code was created in 1994 and was the brainchild of Hara Masahiro, an engineer at Japanese manufacturing company Denso.
They made their way into the mainstream and increased in popularity over time; 14 million Americans scanned a QR code during June 2011.
However, QR codes began to fall out of favour in more recent times, which sometimes happens when a technology that doesn’t necessarily evolve. Then the global pandemic hit and touchless technologies weren’t just wanted, they were needed.
The Pandemic Effect on QR Codes
All of a sudden, QR codes found themselves back in the spotlight. As Forbes puts it, “the pandemic saved the QR from extinction.” The use of QR codes flourished across multiple sectors, from convenience stores, to pharmacies, to retail shop fronts.
They also became mandatory in some settings – in the UK government’s track and trace initiative, for example.
More broadly, the pandemic propelled touchless technologies back into the public view. With social distancing in play and increased hygiene consciousness, contactless payment leapt in popularity.
In the UK, the number of purchases made by contactless technology doubled between May 2020 and the same month the previous year. Touchless experiences – from taps and dryers to touchless check-in kiosks at airports – became much more common.