August 20, 2009The September 18 issue of Entertainment Weekly will contain the world’s first video-in-print (VIP) player with an ad that will feature openly gay actor Neil Patrick Harris of How I Met Your Mother. The campaign, which is backed by Pepsi Max, aims to promote CBS’s Monday night comedy lineup, as well as some of their new dramas. The player uses VIP technology developed by Americhip, and features five different clips totaling 40 minutes, including How I Met Your Mother, Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, Wired.com reports.
The ad works like an audio greeting card, wherein opening the page activates the player, which has a quarter-inch-thick screen seen through a cutaway between two pages that conceal the larger circuit board underneath. The audio quality is a bit squeaky and beware, there are no volume controls. It's actually quite loud.
.
Photo of Entertainment Weekly's upcoming centerfold featuring the new VIP player with Neil Patrick Harris.
The video will appear in the September 18 issue of Entertainment Weekly, but only in a relatively small subset of the circulation. The promo itself will be in every copy, but the video will only be embedded in subscriptions delivered to New York City and Los Angeles residents.
Upon getting to the commercial, there is a 5-second delay before anything happens and then a 5-second still promo before an ad appears for the player’s developer, Americhip.
Upon getting to the commercial, there is a 5-second delay before anything happens and then a 5-second still promo before an ad appears for the player’s developer, Americhip.
.
Next up, a setup begins by three male characters from the network’s hit sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. "I weep for civilization," laments Emmy-nominated Jim Parsons (Sheldon Cooper) at the end of the clip, scripted to reveal that the über nerd was tricked into appearing in an ad in Entertainment Weekly rather than "the current edition of Physics Today."
It remains to be seen if this innovation will prove to be financially viable once the novelty wears off. I have my doubts. Why buy a magazine when you can watch the video on line at your convenience for free?
It remains to be seen if this innovation will prove to be financially viable once the novelty wears off. I have my doubts. Why buy a magazine when you can watch the video on line at your convenience for free?
Neil Patrick Harris had a cameo in Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle (2006) and this poster "photo" was created to promote the movie
.
Watch this YouTube clip showing how the new video-in-print (VIP) works:
.
.
Photo of wild native annual Yellow Corydalis from the author's free flower photo website http://www.freefishcaretips.com/photos32Also visit http://www.galechesterwhittington.com/ for free humor, short stories, poems, and book excerpts from the award-winning gay author
==copyright 2009==
No comments:
Post a Comment