March 14, 2005
Spot for Reyataz Really Speaks to You

By STEVE FRIESS

In this era of Web pop-up ads, it might seem that marketers can't get more intrusive. Yet in this month's Out magazine, there's an ad for HIV drug Reyataz in which readers hear a phone ring, then a male voice saying, "We're at the beach!" Across the page, two guys play backgammon in the dunes. "They are trying to find ways to literally reach out and grab the attention of the reader," says Ad Age marketing reporter Jon Fine. Jeff Leibowitz of the Laredo Group, a firm that specializes in interactive ads, calls it "the biggest innovation in print advertising since the scent strip."

Kathy Baum of Bristol-Myers Squibb, which makes Reyataz, says the ad was an attempt to "break through the clutter" and wasn't much pricier than other inserts, since the technology-a microchip and speaker glued between pages-is cheap and used in greeting cards. The ad generated talk of its own. Blogger Eleanor Brown, on OpinionatedLesbian.com, used it to criticize the happy-go-lucky tone of HIV-drug ads, but she also says, "I kept opening and closing it for, like, two hours."

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