Tank Magazine Launches Interactive 'Pop-Up' In Time For London Fashion Week

Could This Be The Saviour Of Print Magazines?

A niche fashion publisher will launch a new app designed to bring its quarterly magazine to life with more than 100 videos and interviews.

Tank Magazine, a quarterly UK magazine dedicated to contemporary culture, covering art, architecture, fashion, current affairs, and music, has spent six months developing the app, which they claim will turn the magazine into a "pop-up book for adults".

Readers are invited to download the free app, then pass their phone over images in the magazine til they find playable content.

More than 130 videos - around 90 of which were created by Tank - are available in the issue of 0, Tank's animated fashion supplement.

The supplement will also be distributed in The Guardian on 15 September, with plans for Tank to produce four more interactive magazines over the next year.

Here, the editor walks through the features of the magazine (click to watch)

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The B fashion app was developed with image recognition technology specialists VStory.

Matt King, head of leisure, tourism, technology and media research at Mintel, said this sort of app was great for bridging the gap between print and digital media - especially given there was stil a huge demand for print magazines.

According to Mintel statistics, 65% of consumers still prefer to read a print copy of a magazine to an online/electronic copy.

King told the Huffington Post UK: "When it comes to digital media, consumers want seamless integration between devices, and these kinds of apps help create the same kind of integration between print and digital media.

"By introducing an added-value digital element to print, this caters for people who want to be connected at all times but also enjoy the touch and feel of a traditional magazine, and perhaps also enjoy the opportunity a magazine gives them to 'switch off' from technology from time to time."

And Richard Nunn, media analyst, at Charles Stanley said the app was "a great technology to turn traditional print or outdoor media into an interactive, portable and engaging video content".

"Print media is in structural decline, so with the advent of online or device-led versions, and the added interactivity of content within those platforms, this technology brings together devices and paper-based content, ensuring greater engagement with the reader.

"This should only have a positive effect on readership and engage the younger reader who has switched off from traditional newspaper and magazine readership."

Tank isn't the only print title seeking to use technology to improve its visual offering - October's Marie Claire will feature a 45-second video advert for Dolce & Gabbana, which plays automatically when the pages are opened.

And according to Mashable.com, the print/video ad format made its debut three years ago.

In 2009, US television channel CBS created a paper-thin interactive video player as part of a marketing tie up between it and PepsiCo. It was inserted into copies of the 18 September issue of Time Inc's Entertainment Weekly sent to Los Angeles and New York area subscribers.

The user hovers their phone over the image, then presses play to access the content

The underlying technology for the Marie Claire video advert is produced by Americhip, which has been developing multisensory advertising and marketing technologies since 2001.

“A major challenge for advertising agencies and businesses is creating new and innovative ways to capture, educate and influence their audiences’ attention,” Americhip said on its website.

"Why risk the chance that your brand deliverable will be flat and forgettable when your audience can open magazines or point-of-sale books to be greeted by a video that pulls them right into the action?'

The screen is based on TFT LCD, thin-film transistor liquid crystal display technology used in laptop computers, among other products.

Is this the future of print publishing? Could it provide advertisers with more value for their print ads? Let us know your thoughts below.

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