Volkswagen Embeds an Audio Ad in a Newspaper

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September 20th, 2010 || Geeky Talks, General ||

This morning, the readers of the Times of India (print edition) newspaper were in for a pleasant surprise. The newspaper carried an advertisement for Volkswagen on the last page that looked like a regular print ad but with a difference. As soon as people turned to the last page of the newspaper, the ad would start talking by itself.

Volkswagen Audio Ad in Times of India

The magic lies in a small speaker that activates itself when you open the last page of the newspaper. Suhel Banerjee, who captured a video of this ad, says that the audio clip goes on to play in an endless loop till you close the paper.

Reading the online reactions, most people seem to have been left impressed by Volkswagen’s marketing though the ad did create some confusion at one of the airports as Lakshmipathy Bhat points out:

That Volkswagen ad with audio chip caused a minor scare among the trolley crew in Bangalore Airport. Unclaimed paper with noise — staff were nervy.

Here’s a video of the same Volkswagen audio ad that appeared in the Mumbai edition of Times of India.

The cost if all this stuff should go around 5 rupees or so, the technology they used is photoelectric effect (Einstein got the noble prize for this) and used photo-diode. For this stuff they used 2 batteries, 1 speaker and most important a photo diode which hardly cost a rupee for 1 photo diode , when you put light on it, the diode let the battery current flow, there is no rocket science here to get amazed like this.

It’s an innovative idea but certainly not pleasant. I can’t tolerate the thought of more marketeers doing this on a regular basis. We’ll end up with a noisy newspaper and unpleasant morning. Interestingly, my friend being completely irate when i was reading the edition, he came up with an awesome idea. Once i finished, he read the paper in a darkish corner this morning so that the device didn’t get activated. This is what I’m going to have to start doing if the idea gets popular