When magazine ads attack

Good to know that if your magazine starts talking to you (or your toilet, or your wall—see below), it’s not a sign of incipient schizophrenia. At least, not anymore. According to this story in The Wall Street Journal (it’s part of the online edition’s free content), we are in the middle of an increasingly intrusive onslaught of print ads that talk, sing, light up and otherwise cause mayhem, including one for the WB that will appear next month in Rolling Stone and Us Weekly. While advertisers and publishers by and large applaud these more in-your-face ads, printers sound less than thrilled. “It just gets more difficult as these things get funkier and funkier," says Quebecor World exec Mike Riley in the story. As for us, we like it better when our print ads don’t speak unless spoken to.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

August 8, 2005 | Permalink