Posted by Gary M | Posted in A shift in advertising, Leveraging Technology, Personal Insight | Posted on 04-02-2011
Who hasn’t seen “A Christmas Story”? It’s a classic that gets watched in our house every holiday season. So many humorous situations keep families rolling with laughter even when they’ve seen the movie 50 times. Who can forget the one where Ralphie, after checking the mailbox every day for about two weeks, FINALLY gets his Secret Society Decoder Pen. He slams the mailbox closed and runs into the house, full of anticipation of the message revealed by his secret pen. He feels like a CIA agent, the Agent Cody Banks of the last generation. Is he ever pumped!
Ralphie runs upstairs to the bathroom, locks the door and rips open the package. There’s the pen and the secret code. He gets to work. Meanwhile his little brother is knocking on the door. Nature’s calling, but Ralphie keeps plugging away at that message, oblivious to his brother’s dilemma. The pounding gets louder in the scene, both from the door and Ralphie’s racing heart. What does this message say? Whatever it is will change the world, he knows it! Keep going, push through and figure it out, for humanity’s sake! Finally the message is revealed: Remember what it was? DRINK MORE OVALTINE. Even better was Ralphie’s response: “Son of a B****!!!” After all of that buildup came a tremendous letdown.
Fast forward about 50 years from the setting of the movie. Last night my wife discovered a QR code on the newspaper, so she grabbed her Android and I my Blackberry, each one equipped with code readers. Kind of a “quick draw” competition if you will. We each pointed and shot the code, then waited for the phones to decode the message, like we were using Ralphie’s decoder pen. Within 30 seconds the message was revealed: It said: “Here’s the Deal”…It was a site that directed us to a coupon for a restaurant we’d never heard of in a place we never go.
Therein lies the dilemma: We have all of this new technology that could be used to help people, build business, and attract and maintain attention. Or, we could put QR codes all over the place that tell us to “Drink More Ovaltine”. I think we can do better than that.