Print magazines usually can’t compete with the interactive nature of digital technology, but Wired Magazine and Motorola are stepping up their game with a unique ad that rivals many websites and apps.

When your flipping through the new edition of Wired, it might be easy to casually flip past the Wired Interactive Color-Changing Moto X Ad because it looks like any other ad that would appear in a magazine, but this ad has an interactive surprise.

Once you pull the strip out of the side of the page to activate the batteries, the page comes to virtual life, allowing you to see the new Moto X in a wide variety of colors. With this advertisement, you’re not stuck looking at a white phone while trying to imagine what it would like if it were hot pink. Now, you can just press one of the colored dots on the bottom of the page and actually see what the phone would look like in that color.

The innovative promo works through the use of some plexiglass, LED lights, four embedded batteries, and the color selection buttons, and it will be appearing in 150,000 copies of Wired in New York and Chicago… and probably on eBay a short while after it hits the shelves, at prices that will probably be laughable.

Is this the future of advertising in print magazines? It’s a definite attention-getter but precisely how much attention the ad gets, and how much of that attention results in paying customers, will probably determine if we see similar ads in the future. Something like that can’t be cheap so the pay-off for the companies will have to be substantial.

If nothing else, it’s a great marketing gimmick to roll out for special occasions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMrZmSPpIRw