Canada has been a hotbed of Interactive Print activity with newspapers ever since we partnered with publishers like Glacier Media and national papers like The Toronto Star. Over that time, Canadian papers have produced some outstanding campaigns using the Layar Creator and now they’re being rewarded for their creativity and innovation.

Three different Layar campaigns have been awarded five prizes at the 2014 Great Idea Awards, a ceremony honoring excellence in newspaper promotion and marketing in Canada. The awards for Layar campaigns include three 1st place prizes for both Glacier Media and The Toronto Star.

The Toronto Star’s “Go Beyond” campaign – a fully interactive newspaper produced in partnership with Nissan Canada – took 1st place for Print Innovation and 2nd place in the Advertising category for daily newspapers. “Scene,” a fully Layar-enabled magazine from Glacier Media’s Prince George Citizen (Prince George, British Columbia), took home a pair of 1st place prizes in the Magazine and Young Reader Engagement Initiative categories.

“It is a truly interactive print product that drives reader engagement using Layar technology,” said Norm Coyne, founder of Scene. “The ability of readers to use their smartphones to interact with the content and ads in the magazine has taken the Scene PG to a whole new level.”

Another Glacier Media paper – The Peak from Powell River, British Columbia – was awarded a 2nd place prize in the Newspaper Marketing & Promotion category. The campaign encouraged readers to discover the paper’s interactive features through a contest which raised funds for a local hockey club mascot.

“Our staff all participated enthusiastically in the Layar promotion that we hosted as game-night sponsor for our Powell River Kings Junior Hockey Team. They even brought their children to help demonstrate Layar to fans,” said Joyce Carlson, Publisher at Peak Publishing. “Sharing Layar technology was rewarding and placing second in Canada for our entry was extremely satisfying. I’m proud of our staff for coming up with this creative project.”

The awards will be presented at the annual Newspapers Canada Ink & Beyond conference in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island on May 29th.

To discover more about how newspapers can take advantage of Interactive Print, visit our Layar in Newspapers page where you can download our Newspaper Industry Overview.

Back in February we told you about our exciting partnership with Canada’s Glacier Media, which is using Layar in over a dozen local newspapers on a regular basis. To help promote this partnership, Glacier has produced a 30-second television ad to show off the power of interactive print.

“Imagine being able to interact with your newspaper, purchase what you want whenever you want it, investigate your interests, look past the surface,” the ad says. “Don’t just read your newspaper, experience it.”

It’s a really well-made ad and it perfectly explains the core benefits of interactive print - being able to bring the digital interactivity we know and love from the web to print materials.

More big news from the Great White North! Glacier Media, Western Canada’s largest local media company, is launching a massive interactive print rollout with its newspapers in British Columbia. In total, 12 newspapers will incorporate Layar’s technology, with more papers lined up to join soon.

Read our press release here!

Editorial and advertising content in each of Glacier’s twelve local newspaper properties and one real estate publication in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia – a circulation of over 500,000 – will feature Layar’s innovative and enriching interactive print technology. Readers will be treated to a more engaging print experience, as extra digital content is displayed when they scan the pages with the Layar App.

“This will allow print to come to life,” said Alvin Brouwer, president of Lower Mainland Publishing, a division of Glacier Media. “It adds many different dimensions to a print advertising campaign or to the stories and photos that appear in our papers.”

Glacier Media joins a growing group of printers and publishers choosing Layar as its augmented reality and interactive print platform of choice. Fry Communications, one the largest printers in the United States, similarly chose Layar to provide interactive print solutions to its customers just last month.

We’ve already seen proven success in Canada. A recent interactive print advertising campaign for Nissan across a dozen Canadian newspapers produced a 65% increase in test drives for the automaker while helping its creative agencies earn the coveted “Best in Show” prize at the Media Innovation Awards.

“This is a game changer,” said Shelly Wilson, Vice President of Digital Sales at Glacier Media. “The Layar technology provides us the opportunity to increase newsprint’s utility to our readers and advertisers enabling immediate action.”