Innovation, when it comes to print advertising in newspapers or magazines, is tough to hold down in watertight compartments. Innovation could just be a good creative or it could stretch in terms of the material, printing, placement or integrating itself with digital, among other things. The underlying idea needs to be the same though. The advertisers need to have engaging and meaningful conversations with the readers. It’s as simple and as obvious as that.

 

It also has to do a lot in terms of what a brand wants to really achieve. For Motorola India, for example, digital remains the sales model and the primary form of communicating to its target audience. The brand is quite clear about leveraging print effectively for new launches though.

 

Rachna Lather, marketing head, Motorola India, says, “Newspapers are the best way to announce something new. Depending on the product that’s getting launched, we either keep it limited to certain kind of publications, or we go all out. For more affordable handsets, we go with almost all publications including the regional language dailies and for high-end stuff, we restrict it to the English dailies. In terms of the format, we stick to a large format and use vibrant colours to be more impactful and to go with the youthful image of our brand.”

 

Another area which advertisers must sit up and take notice is the slow but strong proliferation of niche magazines which can be leveraged in unique ways when it comes to communication. Of course, we have always had premium magazines that can be leveraged to target that particular audience. However, we now have many independent magazines that are catering to highly specific niches like design, LGBT and visually impaired, among others. The example of White Print magazine and Coca Cola’s simple collaboration says a great deal about this. White Print is India’s first lifestyle magazine in Braille that was launched in 2013 to cater to the visually impaired population of the country. The magazine and Coca Cola went back in time to create an ad for the brand that’s akin to a musical greeting card. Instead of doing a text-based ad, Coca Cola put a musical chip in the centre of the magazine that played the whole brand song ‘Ummeedo waali dhoop, sunshine waali asha’ when the reader opened that particular page.

 

Upasana Makati, founder and editor of White Print says, “The most interesting aspect of the ad was the response from the readers. For them, Coca Cola became a company that was actually trying to innovate for them, and they got terribly excited about it. It worked well for Coca Cola as that target audience finally could associate the jingle with the brand. They even received an award for it at Goafest last year.” While sound based ads is one form of innovation, White Print is also exploring tactile images, so that the shapes can be felt by visually impaired people. The magazine is also up for collaborating with brands to create 3D printing based innovations.

 

Of course, as mentioned earlier, technology is not the only way to drive innovation. Sometimes a cleverly placed ad can do that. Sometimes, a brilliantly crafted long copy can do that. Sometimes a good old musical chip can do that. Sometimes even simplicity that stands out can do that. Who

can ever forget those striking black and white print ads for Apple’s Think Different campaign where there were no computers and no copy? Just an image, the two-word tagline, and the Apple logo in colour.

 

Basically, when I and a million others are spending some quality time with their daily newspaper and morning cuppa, the advertisers simply cannot bombard us with cluttered and haphazard patches of communication. Not only will we consciously ignore it, but it might also leave a negative image of their brand in our heads. What they can do instead is politely and creatively draw our attention to what they have to say, and engage us in a truly creative way. That would be the perfect beginning of the relationship of their brand with us, the readers.