It seems as though digital media offers limitless possibilities for creative advertising. However, some wily designers have managed to produce very innovative advertisements on “old school” media like printed newspapers.
For starters, yes, there is still a demand for the printed word. Not everyone has, as of yet, acquired a fully digital portfolio of news sources. Many people still have the daily newspaper delivered to their front door. Unsurprisingly, it’s typically an older demographic that prefers print media.
Savvy marketers know that money from an older population can spend just as well as money from a younger population. As a result, they craft marketing copies that appeal to them.
SEE ALSO: 5 Advantages of Print Advertising
The Corona Kitchen Ad
Take, for example, the work of Columbia-based creative director Felipe Salazar. He went outside of the box and produced an eye-catching ad… that looks like part of the classified section of a newspaper!
The ad, for Corona Kitchen, actually appeared to be an optical illusion to the casual newspaper reader. That’s good news because that means that the ad would catch the reader’s attention.
Upon careful examination, the ad was a 3D inset of a kitchen. However, the kitchen design was comprised entirely of lines you would see in a classified ad. It’s really a spectacular piece of creativity. You can see it at the top of this article.
The Game Of Thrones Ad
HBO also offered a mind-blowing print ad for the third season of its hit TV show Game of Thrones. The company ran a shadow ad in The New York Times. Shadow ads aren’t anything new, but HBO combined the shadow ad concept with one of the TV show’s most appreciated elements: dragons.
The ad featured a shadow of a dragon taking up almost two full (faux) pages of The New York Times. You can just imagine the reaction that readers of the newspaper had to flipping the page and seeing what amounted to a giant dragon shadow. It was definitely an attention-grabber. In the lower right hand side of the double-page spread, HBO pushed out the real message: a new season of Game of Thrones was on the way.
