A Disappointing Finish

 Carolyn Human, Account Manager

This past weekend, three of us at Travers Collins made the trek down the I-90 to run the Cleveland half marathon. Despite the blog title, we did not have a disappointing finish – in fact all three of us earned a PR (personal record) at the race.

However, one company trying to sell a product at the race expo set a PR for the most misleading and disappointing packaging in my book. For those out there trying to get into social media, this is a perfect example of what NOT to do.

A group of us were walking around the Cleveland Marathon expo. An expo at a race is a great place to find discounted items that all runners need – like a 13.1 magnet for your car, reflective sports sunglasses, running sneakers and gear, plus a lot of free samples! One of those free samples sucked us in, a nutrition bar called Good Greens. It claims to pack in 100% of your daily fruits and vegetables in one serving. My fellow runners each bought a box - $15 for 12 bars. I wasn’t sold. Well at least for the first hour, then I thought about what’s in my refrigerator on a daily basis (let’s just say no veggies) and decided I did indeed need a box.

 

This morning I grabbed a bar for breakfast. I snarfed it down and realized, I might need to order more of these! So I decided to check out the website to see how to order more. I was told at the booth that I could buy them on the website. I Googled the product. Nothing. I typed in the website on the packaging. Nothing. There was also a QR code on the product. For those of you unaware of what a QR code is, it looks like a barcode and if you take a picture with your smartphone using a app like NeoReader, it takes you directly to a website for the product. At TC, we recommend to clients that a QR code lead the customer to something of value and not just the homepage of a website, like a promotion on a page of your website.

Here’s the QR code on the bar:

 

But much to my disappointment, it led me to nothing.

 

Now I’m left wondering, how do I get more of my bars with 100% of my daily fruits and vegetables? That’s the last thing a new product wants a new customer to think after buying into it. You can’t leave customers hanging, because they will move on very quickly. The wrong website and a dead end QR code on the packaging? I’d rather stock up on the real thing in the produce aisle.