“iPad Head Girl” walks around NYC to promote Hearst’s first iPad only magazine

Hearst, the media conglomerate behind Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, ELLE and O, The Oprah Magazine is launching its first iPad only magazine today called Cosmo For Guys (CFG).

It is also the first time Hearst has turned to viral marketing to promote a new magazine. Hearst turned to the NYC based creative marketing agency Thinkmodo to create an original viral video campaign to generate buzz for CFG. And so, “iPad Head Girl” was born.

The video features a girl wearing headgear made out of 4 iPads shaped into a cube projecting video playback of each side of her head. As she walks around a park in NYC, she starts to attract quite a bit of attention but only one guy has the courage to sit down next to her. He figures out that the only way to get her to respond is to touch her face (the projection of her face on the iPad). This launches the Cosmo For Guys magazine app.

“The concept and analogy here is to show a guy ‘getting inside a girl’s head’ and sort of ‘reading her mind’ by flipping through the magazine pages on the iPad. The reason for that is: it is the first magazine for men that is written by women, so for the first time women are letting guys in on what they think,” says the viral’s Creative Director Michael Krivicka.

Thinkmodo had the head gear custom designed and fabricated at Clockwork Apple, makers of those
those MTV movie awards. “Once the girl put on the “iPad head”, she was not able to see. And since she had to walk around the park, we had to figure out a way for her to see inside the iPad Head. So we hid a camera inside her purse that would feed live video into a pair of video glasses she was wearing inside the iPad Head. That allowed her to see where she was walking,” explains Krivicka.  Krivicka worked on the viral with Thinkmodo Creative Director James L. Percelay, Camera man Tom Graney. Thinkmodo is behind a few other virals you may have seen such as the “Times Square Hack,” “The Shaving Helmet,” and the “Nude Gaming Party.”

Check it out iPad Head Girl here.

While you wouldn’t expect most gents to be caught dead buying Cosmo For Guys on the newsstand, those who want to can now stealthily subscribe without anyone having to know about. The iPad magazine is available for download here in the iTunes store.