New Ads Pop Up, Turn On and Smell of Success
When Transamerica Corp. insurance agents hand their business cards to clients later this month, a funny thing will happen. A miniature pyramid will pop out of the fold-up business cards.
To be precise, a three-dimensional cutout of San Francisco’s famous Transamerica pyramid building will emerge. This follows the company’s highly successful advertising campaign that appeared as a pop-up ad in Time magazine last September. That $3-million advertising insert featured a nine-inch pop-up picture of the building--and the rest of the San Francisco skyline. The pyramid on the look-alike card will be about two inches tall.
New wrinkles in print advertising are influencing companies to do far more than change their calling cards. Companies, once fascinated by the power of television to introduce new products or shape corporate images, are experimenting with new printing techniques now available in magazines. In the process, they are changing the way ads feel, smell, and even the way they sound.
When readers of the New Yorker and New York magazines open their December issues, they will be greeted by “singing” center-fold ads for Absolut vodka. These ads, with the aid of a special microchip, play such seasonal tunes as “Jingle Bells,” “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and “Frosty the Snowman.” The microchip--powered by a tiny battery--will automatically play when readers turn to the centerfold ad.
“Can you imagine being on an airplane when 30 people all open their copies of these magazines?” posed John B. Caldwell Jr., senior vice president of marketing for the New York-based Magazine Publishers Assn.
But that isn’t the print industry’s only song. Holograms--which produce three-dimensional images--will premiere in magazine advertising next year. At least four yet-to-be-named major advertisers plan to use holograms to sell their messages in magazines. “Every one of them wants to be first,” said Lee Lacey, founder and chief executive of Holo/Source Corp., a Southfield, Mich., company that specializes in holographic printing.
“The public is bored with standard print advertising,” said Lacey, whose company is working on holographic ads for two major companies. Last month, his firm designed a hologram ad that features the new Lincoln Mercury car, the Merkur Scorpio. The laser photograph is printed on 175,000 cards mailed mostly to owners of expensive sports cars.
Plenty more pop-up ads are on the way, too. Just ask Waldo Hunt, chairman and chief executive of Intervisual Communications Inc., the Los Angeles company that not only created the Transamerica pop-up ad, but also pop-up ads for Honeywell and Chrysler’s Dodge division. His company is creating two more pop-up ads--one that will run in October for a major bank and another scheduled for a Christmas release by a liquor maker.
But Hunt, whose company also makes pop-up children’s books, thinks that the big future for pop-up ads might not be in consumer magazines but in business-to-business advertising in trade publications. “That’s where an advertiser who wants to introduce something special can really dominate a publication,” he said.
These ad innovations are not happening by accident. Magazines read by the general public have suffered a two-year slide in the number of ad pages sold, said Caldwell of the Magazine Publishers Assn. In the first half of 1987, the number of magazine ad pages sold nudged up less than 1%, he said.
But new methods of innovative print advertising may help change that. The association, which has more than 800 member publications, is projecting 5% growth in ad pages during the second half of 1987, compared to the same 1986 period, Caldwell said.
In addition, some advertisers are finding themselves with almost no where else to turn. “Advertising distilled spirits on television is out of the question,” said Michel Roux, president of Carillon Importers Ltd., which distributes Swedish-made Absolut vodka. “The idea of bringing the sense of sound to our ads therefore struck us as revolutionary.”
The concept has already been tried in France. In March, 1985, a musical ad for IBM appeared in a mass-market French magazine, Le Point. But the ad could be placed only in the magazine’s newsstand editions. The technology to keep the tiny microchip from being crushed in mailed copies has only recently been perfected.
Even scent strips took an odd turn this month. Rolls-Royce placed an ad in Architectural Digest that featured the distinctive leather smell of the interior of a new Rolls-Royce. “It’s our way of busting through the clutter,” said Rochelle Udell, senior vice president and creative director at Della Femina, Travisano & Partners, the New York agency that created the ad.
But the new technologies bring with them new problems. Specifically: The ads cost plenty and take a long time to produce. The singing ads can cost advertisers upward of $1 each, and the pop-up ads and holograms cost up to 50 cents each. Conventional print ads typically cost a fraction of that. Many of these offbeat print ads also require extremely long lead times--up to a year for the singing ad campaign, for example.
All of this may not matter, of course, if ads get noticed.
“The whole appeal to advertisers is the novelty of all this,” said Karlene Lukovitz, editor of Inside Print, a Stamford, Conn-based trade magazine for the print media. “If it ever reaches the point where this type of advertising isn’t unusual, everyone will bail out.”
