The observant consumer abroad may have noticed patterned squares on their purchases. In Japan, these shapes now take up space on the side of whole houses, and seen teenagers whipping out their mobiles to take photos.

Of course, these codes contain more than just obscure patterns. Devised in 1994 for industrial use, ‘QR codes’ were employed for tagging boxes as a more information-heavy barcode. For example, the German Post uses them to keep track of packages.

QR codes can be read very quickly with a visual encoding system and may contain up to 50 characters – ideal to store URLs, for example, that could lead to product websites or customer information. In Japan, they are widely used in promotional materials: a whole page ad in a national newspaper might be bought and lined with QR codes, with the correct one linking to a free mobile phone download of a band’s new single.

So why have we not seen this in Europe or the US? Put simply, we lack the necessary technology on our phones. In Japan, where the QR squares have become a staple of pop culture, every cell phone comes with the ability to process these codes. In the west, the iPhone was shipped with a camera that lacks sufficient contrast to even pick out the small black and white squares, and mobile internet outside of the smartphone set is still patchy at best.

So are QR Codes something to bother with outside of Japan? Should marketers engage in QR campaigns? The answer is: Not yet. However, their success in Japan is encouraging, and it shouldn’t be long before we can take advantage of this new technology.