Advertising Gone Wild :: Cool actually!

Los Angeles sort of inoculates one against awe. Yet, once in a while you see something just remarkable. I just had my jaw drop, when I plucked the current issue of Entertainment Weekly from the mailbox. The magazine was a little stiff and though “yeah another stinkvertisement  or a promo CD. Yet, when I opened it a the fold I saw this 

and had my mind blown: A fully functional videoplayer sandwiched into a magazine.The actual picture- and audio-quality was stunningly good: A 2.5" (6.35cm) clean and crisp video screen and a 1.5" (~ 4 cm) not-to-tinny speaker. The whole package not even 5mm <1/4" thick.

The entire contraption presented as a double-page spread:

 

promoting the CBS-TV Fall 2009 season and Pepsi Max (Slogan: The only diet cola for men).  In total it contains about a half hour of previews and Pepsi ads suggesting a rather beefy memory chip.

This is marketing really taken to a completely different level. It is a stunning eye-catcher, but I can only imagine it comes at equally stunning cost. A quick check at a newsstand on Main Street, St. Monica revealed, that the over-the-counter copies of the magazine do not contain the player. Yet, I can actually not imagine that all ~ 700.000 subscription copies were so equipped, the cost would be plainly prohibitive. It is easy to see why:

A little destructive materials testing revealed this. A quite sophisti- cated setup that has the processor and memory under the shielding foil to the right of the screen. Five buttons with excellent tactile quality allow to select five indvidual video clips in additon to the auto-start message shown above. 

In the center of the page is the power switch that is triggered in conventional manner by a plastic tongue that pulls out when the left leaf is opened. Remarkably the device is equipped with a rather capable 350 mA/h rechargable Li-Ion battery (blue) and even a USB-recharging port (below the screen) that can be accessed through a punch-out flap in the back.

Let's assume all the hardware is sourced a bargain-basement prices in China. The screen will probably come in at about $ 5.-, battery $ 3.- processor, memory and miscellaneous parts another $ 5.- Add assembly (clearly a manual job), programming and printing for another $ 2.- the cost of the whole thingamajig is somewhere around $ 15.- and that is before the fee charged by Entertainment Weekly. 

That cost level suggests that the campaign is most likely limited to subscribers in certain target areas in Los Angeles and New York City where there is a perceived concentration of entertainment industry and media workers.

Will I now rush to my couch and watch and gush about such drivel as "Two and a half men", and "Accidentally on purpose" or the rather lame NCIS spin-off "NCIS Los Angeles"? Probably - make that definitively - not! Will I keep this thing, charge it and show it off as proof that I was there when advertisement jumped the shark? You betcha! 

Footnote: Given, that is is pretty much a deconstructed iPod in a cardboard sandwich you get a pretty good idea how much Apple is making on these things, even given a somewhat better screen, a nice aluminum housing and 16GB of memory ($20.-)