The Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper, and Nissan Canada have been nominated as a finalist for the renowned International News Media Association (INMA) Awards for its “Go Beyond” Interactive Print campaign in the Best Marketing Solution for an Advertising Client category.

The paper collaborated with Nissan Canada – which worked previously with creative agencies TBWA and OMD on an award winning 2012 Interactive Print campaign – to create an interactive newspaper experience that brings digital content to the pages of the paper. They launched the “Go Beyond” campaign in September of 2013, allowing readers to interact with the newspaper by scanning the pages with the Layar App. 

Nissan Canada contributed 30 interactive advertisements and sponsored the “Go Beyond” campaign. Readers could see photographs morph into videos, videos of their favorite columnists and even a behind-the-scenes look at the construction of a new aquarium. Additionally, a contest provided users with the chance to win a $3,000 travel voucher. 

The results of the campaign were a huge success, producing lots of encouraging reactions from readers. The well crafted and positioned calls-to-action in the Toronto Star created a 2,200% boost in Layar App downloads in Canada above the daily average. Of those that scanned a page, an unprecedented 95% clicked-through and interacted with the content, and 20% went on to scan content again in the 3 days following the campaign.

“It was important that the audience had the opportunity to participate in an augmented newspaper that leveraged the technology to provide a deeper connection to the content,” said Tami Coughlan, Associate Director of the Toronto Star’s Integrated Solutions Team in an article on INMA.org.

“We wanted to create anticipation for what was coming next and create motivation to look for the clues throughout the paper that uncovered deeper stories, videos, interactive games, and animations,” she added.

The campaign has also been submitted to Canada’s National Newspaper Awards which will be announced on May 30th. The INMA Awards winners will be announced on May 13th at INMA World Congress in San Francisco.

We’re crossing our fingers for the Toronto Star’s campaign. Lots of hard work went into this project, and it would be great to see a second Interactive Print campaign in Canada be rewarded for its efforts.