Which ‘R’ is better? QR? AR? VR? Music marketers increasingly have all of them in their box of tricks to pull out when the budget allows for something a little grander.

Pop star Halsey is covering a few eventualities here by soldering together two of them in the promotion for her new single ‘Darling’. She has made an AR treasure hunt that can be triggered using QR codes that are placed around a number of major US cities.

The H1DD3N immersive installation, as she is terming it, is run in partnership with US telco Verizon and art group FriendsWithYou.

Fans have to track down QR codes in Verizon 5G public spaces in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and Seattle to discover “larger-than-life art pieces” (i.e. giant FriendsWithYou avatars) and hear the new Halsey single.

The treasure hunt is not, however, restricted to people in those five named cities as there is an online version where participants can create their own FriendsWithYou avatars.

There is also a prize on offer of an iPhone 13 Pro which, given it retails for $999, is not exactly a blockbuster; but that is not really the point. This is more about giving fans something fun to do where they can share details among themselves, showing their screengrabs and alerting others to where the QR codes are located.

Naturally there is a hashtag tied into it all (#Hidden13), but it is, somewhat confusingly, rolled up along with another hashtag (#Hidden13Sweepstakes) which appears to be a wider competition with all manner of Apple-related products – such as AirPods, Apple Watches and Home Pods – up for grabs.

Where and how the Halsey side of this fits in is not clear – or, rather, it is heavily diluted. In this hashtag blizzard, the Halsey/music component risks being lost in the storm. Which is a terrible shame as the AR side of it is really quite interesting. A potentially fascinating campaign that has ended up being chopped into confused/confusing fragments.