New Media to Print

The advantage of utilizing new media in advertising is the potential to engage an audience in new and exciting ways. As the audience for advertising has grown increasing wary of advertising, new media has created the opportunity to capture the audiences attention in ways that traditional print advertising can never match. However, integration of a print ad with a new media campaign has the potential to ease a re-engagement of audience with print advertising. Of course, this re-engagement does not have the flexibility of simply adapting one traditional media format to the other (print to TV, TV to print), but rather requires a reimagining of the possibilites of print advertising in a world increasingly dominated by digital communication.

In 2001 Cadbury chocolate successfully realigned itself with a youth audience with its "SMS TXT 'N' WIN" campaign. The advertiser was able to tap into a current new media craze of text messaging, thereby associating itself with a technology largely seen as the domain of a younger generation. As this campaign was a contest, the engagement potential was increased and the means by which this audience was being reached, the mobile phone, was literally on their person at all times. 

Entirely adapting this campaign approach to print advertising would be counterproductive, as the nature of the ad relies upon the medium to create the association of the brand with the youth market. However, one could see a company like Cadbury extending a similar campaign to include print by integrating a contest into its print advertising campaign. For instance, the company could require more information be taken from a print ad in addition to texting the serial number from Cadbury's chocolate bar wrappers.  This would have the further advantage of requiring the contestants to examine a print ad in addition to contacting Cadbury on their mobile phones. However, one must take care to truly expand the parameters of the game so as to not disengage the audience. The print ad should truly add something to the contest without overcomplicating it. For example, the inclusion of the print advertisement might include a prize multiplier where any winnings from the serial numbers game would be multiplied if one included a code word from the print ad. Of course, problems arise when one considers that the success of the original campaign might have been attributed to its simplicity- text and win. However, if advertisers were to create a truly engaging game experience across two mediums, print and mobile phones, the level of engagement required by the audience might be advantage enough to offset the smaller audience that would participate in such a campaign.