This made me laugh at the same time as being full of wisdom. Here's an excerpt from the original post, 'advertising with QR codes', by Tom Fishburne:

'Some marketers are calling 2011 “The Year of the QR Code”, predicting that mobile tagging will become mainstream. Those little black and white tags are popping up everywhere: in billboards, magazine ads, and even tombstones.

QR (or quick response) codes carry the potential of connecting the offline world to the online world, giving a call to action to just about anything. And they use technology that is now in everyone’s pockets.

Yet, as with any new technology, QR codes are merely a means to an end for marketers. They are enablers to big ideas. They aren’t the big ideas themselves. Some brands are merely riding the novelty of QR codes, rather than doing anything interesting with them. Brands need to give a reason for consumers to go through the trouble of scanning a mobile tag and exploring whatever destination the brand has in mind.'

I was mulling this over on the way back to my desk, after a meeting I had this morning, when I spotted a poster with a call to action that simply said, 'Scan this to find out more' - about the special offer being promoted - next to a QR code.

In the context of the ad, it made perfect sense, as it told me what to do with a QR code if I didn't already know as well as why I should scan it.

It stands out among a sea of other ads that feature a QR code and expect me to scan them because I'm intrigued about where I might be taken, or what might happen, next. Intrigue is pretty overrated in marketing - what many marketers consider will be intriguing to consumers, consumers just find irritating or irrelevant.