Ad messages on paper napkins are hardly new, but typically they’re a company logo and maybe a tagline. There just wasn't a lot you could do printing on paper that soft and delicate.
What's new is the ability to print full-color creative with high-definition quality, so that even the subtlest images have a way of standing out.
They're showing up in bars and restaurants.
CW-2, a local Denver CW affiliate, went with the high-def napkins recently to push syndicated versions of "Family Guy" and "Two and a Half Men" to young men at bars. YooNew.com, an online sports tickets seller, used them to reach men in sports bars in Chicago and near Wall Street.
The system comes from JI Worldwide of Bethesda, Md., which distributes them to bars and restaurants for free, in exchange for the right to handle the advertising. The company also distributes the napkins to U.S. Airways and Skybus Airlines airplanes.
JI uses printers adapted for CMYK printing, which produces the high-definition images without chewing up the napkins or compromising the reproduction. CMYK is commonly used in reproducing photographs.
Lead time is typically around 30 days and advertisers can target by market and even at specific locations within a market.
Because the napkins are free, bar and restaurant owners are usually receptive, and they're offered a chance to look at the creative beforehand.
"Say Bacardi wanted a specific market," says Jay Jaber, founder JI Worldwide. "We’d take the creative to the venue and show them what they’d be getting."
