‘Supernatural’ Print Ads Get Gimmicky with Sound Bites

Flashing lights coming
to a magazine near you

Magazine publishers, eager to prove that they can compete with new media when it comes to flash, are offering advertisers new opportunities for showcasing their products. Case in point: next month, Rolling Stone and Us Weekly magazines will include a new ad from the WB network in which the headlights of an illustrated car will flicker on and off, music will play, and characters from the new drama, Supernatural, will offer sound bites about the program, the Wall Street Journal reports (via AZ Central).

Publishers willing to accept such ads - and willing to push their printers to the extreme - include:

Time Warner, whose People magazine included a replica of Aquafina sparkling water made partly out of bubble wrap, and whose Entertainment Weekly included a sound device that played a clip from The Sopranos;

Advance Publications’ Conde Nast Publications, whose magazine Lucky contained a page of stickers presented by DaimlerChrysler’s Jeep

Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., whose Premiere magazine’s publisher Paul Turcotte says he is open to the possibility of including small bags of candies or popcorn kernels in a magazine issue.

Publishers and advertisers must be aware of U.S. Postal Service restrictions. When Samsung’s agency Cheil Communications created an insert of the outdoors, complete with powerful pine scent, the postal service said the scent’s strength exceeded regulations. The fragrance had to be dialed back a notch before the insert appeared in subscriber issues of Premiere and Elle Decor.

Printing and postage costs, too, can pose problems. Publishers pass the costs along to advertisers and, while the total cost of a particular ad can vary widely depending on complexity, the most “stunning tricks” can run advertisers as much as a few million extra dollars, said Paul Caine, People’s publisher. Advertisers can limit their costs by distributing the ads only to subscribers, or to subscribers only in certain geographic areas.