Interactive Print Advertisements
Why is it that every advertising professional in a movie or television show passes a newsstand on their ultra-cool walk to work? The answer, I have no idea, but perhaps Hollywood only understands the Madison Avenue lifestyle of advertising. The real answer is not that important to me but the next time you are walking to work in a movie or passing a newsstand take a second to view the magazine covers. A number of magazine publishers are allowing advertisers to place new and unique ads on their covers.
According to the American Society of Magazine Editors, ads on magazine covers violates a rule which requires a clear separation between editorial space and advertising space; however, the penalty is typically minimal. There are a number of magazine cover advertisements; some examples include, Us Weekly’s mock cover, promoting the HBO movie “Grey Gardens” or Esquire Magazine having a cover with a special pull-back tab for the new Discovery show Trapped but Popular Science this week has taken their cover to a whole new level. Popular Science, with the help of General Electric, has created the first-ever interactive 3-D cover.
Interactive print advertisements have been around for a number of years. Examples include scratch-and-sniff ads for Diet Pepsi, CBS used a taste stripe to promote a television show based on family of rum makers and Yellow Tail placed ads equipped with push button LED lights to promote one of their wine brands. Advertisers continue to search for unique ways for consumers to spend more time with their brands and interactive print ads are helping advertisers achieve just that.
When Popular Science decided to team up with GE, they did not decide to change the advertiser for the cover and viewed GE as much more of a content provider. The cover, which features a number of wind turbines, has a call-out on it asking consumers to hold it up to a Web cam in order to see the interactive 3-D action. When a consumer holds up the magazine to a Webcam, it signals the computer to display flash-based imagery making it look like the turbines are moving. To check out how the cover works watch this YouTube video. If you have a web cam and want to see how the advertisement works for yourself, you can print out a copy of the advertisements at a dedicated microsite at www.popsci.com/imagination. When viewing the microsite for GE and Popular Science stop over and check out the GE microsite located here, the site is pretty unique and interactive and it discusses their latest Smart Grid technology.
In general, this is a pretty creative and unique way for Popular Science and GE to attract more consumer attention. Not only does the interactive advertisement help create a buzz for the magazine but it helps drive traffic to the GE microsite. The partnership between the magazine and the content provider (in this case GE) is a well-thought through technique that stretches multiple mediums. Interactive print advertisements can be a very successful technique especially if they are part of an integrated marketing campaign that uses multiple mediumsand gets the consumer to do what you want. Overall, I think Popular Science and GE have created a campaign set up for success.
Tags: Advertisement, GE, Interactive, Popular Science, Print, Trendspotting
