Near-impossible late deadline negotiation allowed us to insert the most current news, stocks, sports and weather on the watch face at press time. And although US newspapers don’t usually guarantee placement on specific pages, we negotiated specific positions on news, stocks, sports and weather pages to create message/medium synergy. As a result, information displayed on the watch often exactly matched the editorial on the surrounding page.

The high cost of newspaper advertising makes extended campaigns cost-prohibitive. By using ‘real-size watch’ (small size) creatives, we extended the campaign to five weeks (versus a projected one week launch), generating over 144 appearances. During the newspaper campaign, sales were 23% higher than in subsequent weeks.