A Remote Controlled Car with A QR Code

Video

That’s not any toy car. That’s a remote controlled car with a QR code on top, in what is in my opinion, the coolest marketing strategy of the year. For… a school club. But let’s rewind a bit to tell you how I got here.

Background

Around a month ago, club applications for our school were opened. My friend, Ryland, and I had been running a Stock Market / Investing club for the past two years, and planned to run it again this year. There was only one thing in the way: we needed to advertise the club.

Most school clubs advertise with a fairly standard poster. An 8.5 by 11 inch paper with the club name, some information, and a link to sign up. The previous year, we realized that, although that method worked, only people who were actually interested in the club or spent the time reading the five paragraph essay on the poster would sign up. We would need a way to reach people regardless of interest, and then later they could choose whether or not they were interested in joining the club.

So what did we do? We simply stuck a QR code on a piece of paper, along with the stonks meme. That was it. No club name, no information, no details, just a QR code and a meme.

It worked pretty well. But we wanted to see if we could do better.

The QR Code Car (or as I called it, the QaR)

So Ryland and I began working on a driving QR car. There were a few design constraints. The car had to be cheap and somewhat durable, since we’re talking about high schoolers. It also needed to drive on different terrain, since the school has grass, concrete, tanbark, and rocks. And finally, the QR code had to be visible and engaging.

For cheap and durable, we found a twenty dollar RC car on Amazon. It seemed durable enough and had four wheel drive, making it able to tackle the different terrains it needed to. I was able to scale down the size of the remote as well, making it pocket sized. This is important for later :).

For the QR code, we again knew that if we put the words “Stock Market Club” on the top, people wouldn’t scan the code if they weren’t interested. Therefore, we just put a QR code on a piece of paper and mounted it to the car. That was it.

And with that, we released it into the school. The tiny remote made it look like no one was driving the car, so many people thought it was self driving. In the week that followed, we got almost a thousand scans, and by the start of the club, we had over ninety members signed up.

Thank You!

Anyways, that’s how Ryland and I created the funniest marketing stunt of the year, a wandering QR code for a school club.