Microsoft’s print campaign for the Windows 8 operating system includes 14 Conde Nast magazine covers styled as the Windows 8 “Start” screens of the magazines’ top editors.
According to a Conde Nast rep, the covers are not paid ads, but are designed to coordinate with inside ads and the magazines’ own Windows 8 content.
The American Society of Magazine Editors guidelines stipulate that paid advertisements fixed to magazine covers are required to be identified as ads; however, the Start screen promotions are not.
Media agency Starcom MediaVest Group has called the approach a “groundbreaking multifaceted paid program with nonpaid elements.”
“The promotions, full pages attached to the covers of 14 titles from Allure to Wired, show the new Windows 8 Start screen tailored for most of the magazines’ top editors,” reports Advertising Age.
“Glamour, for example, depicts a Start screen for Editor-in-Chief Cindi Leive with items such as highlights from a magazine event, a tweet that Windows 8 pulled in from @glamourmag, a December Issue Sampler for Windows 8, the Windows camera app, a special edition of the magazine and a holiday-party reminder from the new Windows 8 Calendar app.”
The concept of a paid program with nonpaid elements may raise some questions, but it is legitimate today for publishers to use covers to market digital content, notes Sid Holt, CEO of the American Society of Magazine Editors.
“Magazines frequently run stories about companies that advertise in the same issue — magazines put actors on the cover for movies advertised inside, for example — and we rely on editors not to let that influence them,” he said.
Microsoft’s print campaign for the Windows 8 operating system includes 14 Conde Nast magazine covers styled as the Windows 8 “Start” screens of the magazines’ top editors.
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