First-ever VIP (video-in-print) promotion

CBS and Pepsi Max are embedding a video player in a print ad for the fall-TV-preview issue of Entertainment Weekly in September. That's right, it's a TV commercial inside a magazine. And it's a 40-minute commercial, consisting of clips from shows on CBS's fall schedule. They're calling it "the first-ever VIP (video-in-print) promotion." Opening the page pulls a little mechanism that causes the commercial to start after a five-second loading delay. Which gives you exactly enough time to think, "What the heck is with that tiny screen?" The video device is a quarter-inch thick and seen through a die cut that conceals a larger circuit board. The whole effect is considerably more impressive than the e-ink cover of Esquirelast year. Of course, due to the high cost, only a small number of issues in New York and Los Angeles will carry the ad. As a stunt, it's extremely effective. As a new form of media, it's dead out of the water without some more interactivity. It's too bad it can't respond to its environment and work together with an out-of-home campaign. But the future is coming. This is just one small step for media technology, but one giant leap toward my dream of auto-updating periodicals that can respond to nearby ads.