QR Codes in Lottery Tickets,
Gambling and Cigarettes
QR code from cigarette carton.
Ahh, America’s greatest addiction…the lottery! Now, as much as I like to play the mega millions once in a while, my thoughts on the lottery and gambling are probably much different than others. While I think that the people who win the lottery are very grateful, I also think to myself how much money did they spend to get that winning ticket?? Did you ever walk into a casino and see the people sitting at the machines that look like they never moved from the machine since the casino was built?! Those are the people that I question whether they really know how much money they are losing by gambling. I went to Vegas last year and I gambled four dollars, yes, four dollars, and it only took me one minute to lose it before quickly realizing that this was a losing game already. So, I took my wife and we went shopping instead. Yes, I spent a lot of money, but you know what?, I got a lot of things for that money I spent!
Anyways, I did recently see something that I thought was pretty cool. It was a QR code for a contest, if you were one of the first three people to scan the QR code won twenty dollars in lottery tickets. Now, I thought that was pretty neat!
I also saw something online the other day that was in Nakatsugawa, Japan. The producer of Hundred Year Old Sake had put a QR code on his bottle. If you scanned the QR code, it automatically entered you into a lottery to win a prize. The prize was a foot-warmer that was made from lava from Mount Fuji and bath oil made with Sake. Pretty cool stuff I’d say!
While this is all pretty cool stuff though, I'm still not convinced how QR codes are going to revolutionize the world in lottery and gambling. However, I could be proven wrong. :)
The other thing that I saw one of my employees carrying into work was a slip of paper with a QR code on it. It came out of a carton of cigarettes and if you scanned the QR code, you got a free gift. Now, I'm not a smoker so for me, this doesn't do much, but I suppose for someone who smokes, a few bucks off a pack of cigarettes would be a big deal since they are more than my wife's foundation she uses in the morning. I mean really America, you could get a whole bottle of wine for that price!!