Marketing Fads

[KristineS]

I think we all know that fads come and go. In marketing we've had the "send something tangible with your direct mail piece" fad, which was based on the idea that people would be less likely to throw your message away if it came accompanied by a promo item of some kind. Then there was the whole "put your brochure on something other than paper" fad, which led to a lot of brochures which were had to read. There's also been the QR code fad, where companies were putting QR codes everywhere, even places where it made no sense to have one.

What marketing fads do you think were the stupidest ones ever? Have you ever gotten caught up in a marketing fad?

[David Hunter]

QR codes were/are definitely the stupidest! I never understood them, specially when they gave a website to go underneath. Plus, who wants to download another app.

[Harold Mansfield]

QR codes were/are definitely the stupidest! I never understood them, specially when they gave a website to go underneath. Plus, who wants to download another app.

I actually liked QR codes as a concept. But the implantation was crap, marketers misused them, and the functionality was cumbersome. I never understood why no one ever created a simple native camera app that had all of the tools you needed to read QR and Bar Codes. It's the same camera. Needing a different app, and no standard is what killed QR codes. Microsoft tried to create a standard with Tag, and it was a good system, but they abandoned it.

They are still pretty popular around the world and I still see them in use online to quickly get to the mobile version of a product, and in media like video podcasts and embedded advertisement. A lot actually, but mainly on things aimed at a "tech savvy" crowd.

So I guess my answer is, yeah I was all over QR codes and use to have one on my business cards.

[David Hunter]

I still see QR codes, but not like I used to. I don't personally know anyone who does use them.

I could see them being more popular, like you said, if we didn't need an extra app to scan them. I think that was part of my problem with them, when they first came out I downloaded an app and it didn't work so that was the end for me. ha

[KristineS]

QR codes were a big fad that did have potential but, as Harold pointed out, they didn't get implemented well. I had an experience similar to David's. I downloaded an app to read them, and it didn't work half the time, so I gave up.

[Harold Mansfield]

Worst implementation I ever saw was a few years back when QR codes were still kind of new, and responsive was just becoming a standard. One of the tech magazines that I used to get ( I wanna say it was Website magazine, but not sure) had a QR code on every cover. I finally scanned it one day hoping it would take me some place magical like I'd seen in all of the articles about QR code use in Korea and Japan. All it did was take me to the website. And not even a mobile version. The regular, non responsive website, except now it was miniature.

That was my "Oh, for pete's sake!" moment with QR codes and figured they were probably doomed as a main stream marketing tool in America.

There was also A LOT of spam with them as well, with many QR codes plopped anywhere that did nothing but link to a squeeze page to sign up for something.

[KristineS]

My favorite is still QR codes on billboards and trucks and stuff. Seriously, who is ever going to scan those and go to whatever they lead to? Plus, how dangerous would it be if people were scanning them. I see trucks on the freeway with QR codes on them. That's exactly what I want the drivers around me to be doing, trying to scan a QR code while going 80 miles an hour.

[Harold Mansfield]

I'm much more bullish on NFC now and have been for a couple of years now. At least it has main stream usage with all of the payment options. I think it has great potential to do so much more for marketing, and daily usages beyond that, but the public is still out of the loop. If you say "NFC" people tune out and are like "What?". But if you say Android or Apple Pay they're like "Oh yeah", but have no idea how it works. Just that it does.

There's also a range of accessories outside of the standard of the NFC consortium, and the NFC apps are cumbersome. No normal person would use them. Also, no one has come up with a compelling usage scenario that is easy to understand and useful for anyone. It's kind of like QR codes in that way, except that as long as there is pay by phone it won't be going anywhere soon.

JMO of course.

[turboguy]

Well, lets see what I can think of in the way of things related to marketing that have bit the dust. Hit counters on web sites would be one. Laying out web pages with tables would be another. Flash into pages. Flash in general. Yellow page adverting, print advertising to some degree. If I think of more I will add them later.

[Harold Mansfield]

In Internet marketing....

Directories! Directory links. Building your own directories. Building your own Digg clones. I remember those days.

I also remember some SEO fads:

Putting ".html" at the end of all of your page links.
Putting a blog on a sub domain because sub-domains supposedly ranked higher ( no rhyme or reason, but people believed that).
Blogger blogs rank higher by default because Google owns it
More pages means better rankings, regardless of what was actually on them.
Link exchanges.

I can probably list a few more of those.

[Fulcrum]

but the public is still out of the loop. If you say "NFC" people tune out and are like "What?".

When I say NFC, I'm usually referring to NFG and FUBAR as I'm tossing the item on the scrap pile.

Aside from that, I have no idea what NFC means.

[Harold Mansfield]

Aside from that, I have no idea what NFC means.

Near Field Communication. It's basically passing information between a device and a receiver just by getting them close together (typically 4cm or less ).

Phone payments, hotel room keys, mass transit passes,parking passes, office key cards....anything where you just have to tap a card (or tag of some sort) or a device, to a receiver of some sort to make an action happen, is usually NFC.