Without a doubt, QR codes are one of the hottest business marketing and advertising trends of the year.

In case you’re still unfamiliar with QR codes, they allow companies to merge the worlds of print, mobile and digital. A user scans the QR code with their mobile phone’s camera and, depending on what data the QR code holds, gets sent to a website. 

It doesn’t just act as a link to a website though – QR codes can hold contact data, information or, well, anything else really.

One recent great example of QR code usage is Radisson Edwardian, the hotel chain, which has added QR codes to its restaurant menus.

Every month, Radisson Edwardian will add a QR code to its “dish of the month”, which links to an online video of a chef preparing the dish. 

“Knowing how a dish looks at the ordering stage is very useful, so the QR codes will be genuinely helpful to customers,” says Amy Clarke, e-commerce manager at Radisson Edwardian.

According to I Spy Marketing, the digital agency behind the scheme, a large proportion of Radisson Edwardian customers are already tech-savvy, already using location-based apps such as Foursquare and Facebook Places to check in to its 13 hotels. So take up of the QR codes is likely to be high.

We like this creative use of QR codes, but would like to see this pushed a bit further – instead of sending customers to watch a video of how the dish is prepared, why not send them to watch a live webcam of their dish being prepared in the kitchen? Now that would be cool.

Real Business also got in on the QR code game recently, including several QR codes throughout our latest magazine. We wanted to bridge the gap between print and online, and it’s worked so far: there’s been a surprisingly good uptake of people trying the QR codes out. Have you tried them out yet?

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