Merging Digital With Print Advertising

Chevy has taken the video trend to another level (or rather, another medium). According to Advertising Age’s article “Chevy Runs Digital Video Ads in Print (Yes, You Read That Right),” Chevy recently inserted video content (see video above) into print advertisements in thousands of magazines of Esquire and Popular Mechanics to promote their new Chevy Colorado. While Chevy is not the first to try this, they have found a creative way to merge video content and with the niche world of magazine advertising. In previous blog posts we’ve discussed the important role video plays in social media, but Chevy has taken video beyond the social space and connected the thriving digital world with the print world.

What’s awesome about this advertising tactic is that it takes the benefits of print magazine advertising and combines it will the advantages of video to make a new medium of marketing. Maybe with this type of innovation, the print world can stand a chance to survive in the digital age.

While this digital-print adverting is not feasible for every brand, alternative tactics to achieve a similar effect could be with augmented reality. For years brands have already been experimenting with augmented reality to create a connected experience with their consumers. The only drawback with this marketing tactic is that the consumers have to have an app to transform the message or image into an active video on their screen. It’s not as effective as the autoplay videos on Facebook’s newsfeed, but it’s finding a way to merge video into other mediums.

I wonder what’s next in the world of video. Who knows, maybe in several years, our reality might look more and more like the Harry Potter world (remember the “live” photographs that moved and talked in the grand staircase?). Every day brands are thinking of innovative ways to communicate their message, so I think anything is possible.