Scan the Largest-Ever QR Code

What can you do with 80 gallons of black and white paint, 10,000 square feet of concrete, one parachute, and a bit of mobile technology magic?

Send people to your website, of course.

Social Networking firm Skanz recently released the following time-lapse video of the company's attempt to create the world's largest QR code—those digital, square images that look like E.T.'s version of a bar code. The Skanz cofounders and their friends and family covered an approximately 100 foot x 100 foot block of track at Wall Stadium Speedway on the Jersey Shore, after which skydivers leaped from a plane and shot footage of the code hundreds of feet below.

The producers pause the video at the end and invite you to try scanning the code on your smartphone. So give it a shot.

Now of course, this is one (absurdly) big marketing stunt—but just how advanced was the plotting? We tried two different QR scanning apps (Tag on iPhone and ScanLife on Android) in an attempt to zap the image frozen on screen. Neither worked.

But alas, the Skanz app locked in on the code and we were looking at their homepage within seconds.

Should we believe the others are inferior apps, unable to handle slightly fuzzy images from far above the ground? Or did Skanz create a code that somehow suits its app better than others?

Either way, this was some pretty crafting marketing.

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J.D. Harrison is an assistant editor at Portfolio.com.