The most common mistake campaigns make when designing a yard sign is adding too much stuff. Your average voter doesn’t spend more than a few seconds looking over a direct mail piece, so imagine how little time that same voter spends on reading a campaign sign.

We typically don’t expect folks to get much out of a yard sign except for some increased name identification for the candidate, which brings us to the question of adding so-called Quick Response barcodes to campaign signage. Some strategists have suggested it’s time these black boxes become a requirement, just like having the candidate’s name and the office he’s running for.

More often than not, though, QR codes will simply add clutter and are not useful to the campaign. I will hedge a bit here and add that good designers can incorporate QR codes into the design of a sign in a way that doesn’t detract significantly from the candidate’s name and the office he’s seeking—the most critical elements of any campaign lawn sign…

If you do decide to incorporate QR codes into signs, literature or mail:

…make sure you’re getting the most out of the QR code by sending the voter to appropriate content. Just linking to the campaign website isn’t effective. Some of the best uses of QR codes on campaign yard signs:

• Connecting the voter to the candidate’s social media networks on Facebook or Twitter.
• Signing up the voter for text message or email alerts from the campaign.
• Asking the voter to indicate whether he is a supporter or not.
• Sending the voter to a biographical or issue-based video of the candidate or a mobile optimized landing page with similar content.