The QR Code Face Off of the Week: Big Pharma vs. Two Tech Companies

We pitted three corporate giants against one another this week. Between Microsoft, Dassault Systemes and Boehringer Ingelheim, which company do you think did the best job with its mobile tag usage (QR Codes® vs. Microsoft Tag) and advertising composition (copy, layout, call to action)?

Boehringer Ingelheim Gets Wordy

Reading this ad makes me happy I don’t work for a pharmaceutical company. They obviously must be wordy because of disclosure requirements. I can see that it would be a challenge to be a designer for a pharma. I would hate to think my designs had to be blessed by the legal department.

The strongest copy point is how the product “reduced stroke risks by 35% or more” is buried.  The QR Code leads to a lot of repeated safety information about Pradaxa® rather than the promised tools and tips for caregivers and is not web mobile optimized. The QR Code landing page seems to be designed for the “eyes” of caregivers who are hopefully in their 30s or 40s rather than seniors 50 and older.  It is important to match your QR strategy to the target audience.  Keep in mind that  only about 14% of boomers even use QR Codes as shown in the VentureBeat graphic below.

Age Groups Using QR Codes

Microsoft Pushes Its Own Tag Technology

Microsoft does a great job of making mom or dad want to run out and buy a new PC, loaded with Office 2010 and OneNote so this lovely teen can have her shot at making valedictorian. The ad isn’t too wordy and has a great offer with a deadline for purchase.

And even though QR Code usage is somewhere around 72% vs. the 24% usage of Microsoft’s mobile tag technology, it remains steadfast on pushing its tag. So I downloaded the free reader as instructed and was quite pleased with how easy it would be to share this offer with a friend. It seems odd that  Microsoft would not go for the high percentages guaranteed to give them more conversations by using a QR Code. Are they going to continue to ignore the stats below in 2013, too?

• QR Codes accounted for 61% of all codes used in the first quarter, growing to 72% in the fourth quarter of 2011.
• Microsoft Tags lost share, falling from 39% of all codes in Q1 to 25% in Q4. All other tags accounted for only 1% each in the last quarter.

SOURCE:  Nellymoser Study as reported by Finger Food, Feb. 13, 2012

Dassault Systemes Dazzles in its Print and Digital Execution

Dassault Systemes shares a compelling story of how the billion-dollar fashion industry can tap its 3D technology to turn a design sketch into tomorrow’s hottest boutique seller.

I was thrilled that the QR Code took me to a web-optimized page that I could actually read without increasing the screen size, and it took me further down the education and purchasing pipeline and offered three exit buttons to clearly flag where I was in the sales process.

So who won this week’s face off? Dassault Systems with a score of 72 out of 80.

Here are my tabulations and scores based on a scale of 1-10 in eight categories.