A video posted by Newspaperswork, a Belgian print marketing platform, is a humorous and interesting take on the power of print to engage its readers.

In it, they provided three ad execs from leading companies with personal chauffeurs for the day so they could focus on reading the paper during their commute. Unbeknownst to the execs, Newspaperswork planned for some interesting, funny and ridiculous things to happen along the way - things that would normally catch your attention.

Bears driving cars, a man on fire, golfers in the medians … the inanity was on full blast just beyond the window of the car. However, in each case, the ad exec had their eyes buried in their newspaper and never noticed any of the antics going on around them.

A funny spin on the engagement of print, but it comes with truth as well. This is just another example of why print is far from dead, because readers are highly engaged with print products while reading.

With Layar’s interactive print technology, print engagement can reach even higher rates. One YouTube commenter sarcastically notes, “I wonder why they didn’t post this video in a newspaper but on the internet.” Well, with Layar, they could have done just that.

The following post was written by Layar’s Marjolein Stromeier.

Puur Natuur is a quarterly magazine sent to 730,000 members of Natuurmonumenten, the Dutch Nature Association. I spoke with Marianne Nouwens, Manager of the Corporate Media & Online team at Natuurmonumenten about why they recently made their magazine interactive with Layar.

In May of 2012, Marianne heard Layar co-founder Claire Boonstra speaking at the Nationale Coverdag, an international event for magazine publishers, and became very enthusiastic about interactive print. The next day, she involved the editorial staff in her plans and they got started. Puur Natuur used Layar to enhance the pages of its September issue, and Marianne was amazed by how easy the Layar Creator works.

“The instructions are very clear, it is so easily accessible and extremely simple to use,” she said. “The Layar Creator is a wonderful platform.”

Marianne also praised the support and development team for listening very well to her as a customer and answering her needs.

Natuurmonumenten has really beautiful, wonderful content, both offline and online, so it’s a no-brainer that they have embraced the opportunity to connect this content to their print readers.

Marianne says readers are very enthusiastic about the interactive magazine. In the winter of 2012, Puur Natuur enhanced its second issue with Layar, and saw 80% more viewers from the previous edition after just three days of publication.

Natuurmonumenten employees have provided lots of positive reactions from out in the field, which may be featured with Layar in the next edition of Puur Natuur in the spring.