Introduction

There are over a billion QR codes in the world today, and the number is about to jump. GS1, the body that governs product barcodes, is replacing the traditional barcode with QR codes under an initiative called Sunrise 2027. Benjamin Claeys, founder and CEO of QR TIGER, has spent three years working with GS1 on that transition while building a dynamic QR platform used across retail, hospitality, healthcare, and education. His argument is simple: packaging, shelves, menus, and print are becoming measurable marketing cha els that brands fully control, and most marketers are not ready.

Why Sunrise 2027 Turns Every Product Into a Cha el

The GS1 Digital Link QR code does two jobs at once. A store sca er extracts the serial number embedded in the URL, so logistics and checkout work exactly as they did with a barcode. A shopper's phone opens the full URL instead, landing on a product page with sourcing details, recipes, compliance information, or related items to upsell. Claeys sees this as the biggest new QR market of the next several years, and he notes it costs brands nothing beyond placing the code correctly. His point that stuck with me: "It's not Google that controls your cha el. It's not a Facebook that controls that cha el. It's you."

Context Decides Which Surfaces Deserve a Code

Claeys pushes back on the idea that every surface should carry a QR code just because it can. The test is whether a specific person has a good reason to interact with that surface at that moment. A restaurant table passes. A highway billboard does not, since asking a driver to pull out a phone creates a safety problem rather than a touchpoint. His favorite retail example is Decathlon, where shoppers scan items in-store, add them to a cart, and have everything shipped home within a day. That is retail and e-commerce co ected through a single scan, not a gimmick.

Why People Actually Stop and Scan

The most common mistake Claeys sees is assuming a QR code alone drives action. A code is a cluster of dots that communicates nothing on its own. A call to action next to it, such as "scan for a discount" or "scan to see the video," lifts scan rates by 70 to 80 percent in his data. Placement matters just as much, which is why he argues a QR code deserves logo-level real estate on the front of a package rather than a corner on the back.

Design and Landing Page Basics

Light branding helps because it signals trust, but heavily stylized AI-generated codes often stop reading as QR codes at all. Pastel colors and low contrast fail in dim environments. On the landing side, the page has to load fast, be built for mobile, and deliver exactly what the call to action promised. If the goal is a lead, ask for one email field, not fifteen. Claeys has watched campaigns fail on a desktop-only landing page and then blamed the code.

Measuring Beyond the Scan

Static codes are just links. Dynamic codes route through a short redirect that captures location, time, device language, and campaign signals, and can serve different experiences based on that data. Claeys cautions that scans are the equivalent of an email open rate: "A QR code is nothing else than a digital door." Conversion downstream is the real metric. For benchmarks, he cited roughly 1 to 4 percent scan rates for print ads, 4 to 10 percent for direct mail, 5 to 15 percent for products, 40 to 60 percent for restaurant menus, and about 1 percent for billboards.

Ru ing Multi-Surface Campaigns

Use a distinct dynamic code for each placement so you can compare billboard, packaging, print, and TV performance. Because the destination URL is editable after printing, you can A/B test fu els mid-campaign or trial a hundred posters and double down on the locations that scan. For brands managing thousands of codes across SKUs and cities, QR TIGER built an AI assistant that answers natural-language questions about scan data instead of forcing someone to open each code individually.

Conclusion

Sunrise 2027 is already underway, and larger brands are shipping GS1-powered codes today. The playbook Claeys laid out is practical: put codes only where context justifies a scan, pair every code with a clear call to action and prominent placement, build mobile-first landing pages that deliver on the promise, and measure conversions rather than scans. The brands that treat their packaging as an owned cha el now will have the data and the habits in place when every product on every shelf becomes sca able.