60,000 Attendee Global Citizen Festival in NYC Taps QR Codes

On Sept. 28, a capacity-crowd packed Central Park’s Great Lawn to watch musical performances by Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys, John Mayer and Kings of Leon at the Global Citizen Festival.

The event was produced by the Global Poverty Project, an advocacy group that works to end extreme poverty by 2030.

One of the things that caught our attention about the marketing for this event is that the organizer employed QR codes in an out-of-home (OOH) environment.

The execution format was posters on retail store windows. See photo of QR code execution from a Cotton On store in LA on Encore’s LinkedIn Company Page (the event was presented in partnership with the Cotton On Foundation).

QR code penetration is still relatively low in the US. Penetration stats vary depending on the source. A report released earlier this year by Arbitron Inc. and Edison Research entitled “The Infinite Dial 2013: Navigating Digital Platforms” indicated QR code penetration of mobile users at 21%.

It is important to note that this data point simply means 21% of mobile users scanned a QR code at some point not that they do it regularly. Take a look at these more granular data points on usage level. According to this same study, just 2% did it at least once a day, with the remaining 19% doing so less frequently.

QR codes are certainly not a play on scale as SMS/text messaging is but they do offer benefits that SMS doesn’t such as a much more robust menu of call-to-actions.

There are plenty of marketers who report excellent results with QR codes so understand your audience’s mobile media habits, and if you see that your audience embraces this activity, then consider integrating QR codes into your event promotion.

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Posted on October 23, 2013