The Media Arts Group

Why Design Matters – Main Line Wine Events

admin — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 19:03:35 +0000

I wanted to share a really wonderful piece of design with you in case you missed it in Sunday’s newspaper. It’s a great example of what can be done with a full page ad if an advertiser is looking to do something different to attract an audience. In this case, it’s an educational wine series that Marketing is coordinating in conjunction with Main Line Wine Events. The tastings will happen at a different venue every Sunday during the month of November.

There will be a series of ads, in various sizes running from now until November 27th. We are creating a splash page that will provide details on each tasting and will include a link for people to purchase either single tickets or tickets for all four tastings.

Even though there is a lot of copy in this ad, it still maintains effective design principles. Strong headline, eye-catching art and good use of white space. Sarah Sterner designed the ad as well as the rest of the ads in the campaign. Natalie Rutman wrote the article that appears inside the ad. To me, this is a great example of how to take an ordinary ad and make it extraordinary. Kudos to Sarah and Natalie.

“The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation
of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and
pictures into new relationships.” -Leo Burnett

Why Design Matters – Today’s Front Page

admin — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:56:21 +0000

I’ve attached a copy of yesterday’s front page because I was thrilled to finally see a properly designed jewel box!

Kudos to Red Robin for understanding the jewel box concept. Simple copy with a redirect to another ad inside the paper. I don’t like that these jewel boxes have become so cluttered. We all need to do a better job when presenting these to clients. This is not the space to put coupons and cram it with meaningless copy points.

In any event, please take a moment to look at the attachment and enjoy a properly designed jewel box.

William Childs

Why Design Matters – Westgate Jewelers

admin — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:52:26 +0000

I’ve been enjoying the Westgate Jewelers campaign that has been running in our paper and I’ve attached the most recent ad for your viewing pleasure. Once again, all the critical elements are in place. A great headline contributed by Media Group Artist Joe Walker, works well with the overall design by MAG designer Lisa Strella.
For me, the white space really helps the ribbon and the ring leap off the page. This account is smart enough to know that you don’t need additional copy talking about affordable payment plans, number or years in business, directions on how to get to the store or even a line or two informing you that the store also sells other jewelry besides rings. It’s just not necessary.
I believe there’s a reason Westgate Jewelers doesn’t do that. I believe this account wants its ad to stand out and be seen by as many Morning Call readers as possible. In my opinion, that’s a winning strategy.
Kudos to the excellent work that Account Executive Jon Bohner and the Media Arts Group have done on behalf of this client. It’s reassuring to me to know that there are still clients out there that appreciate and use good design principles in their marketing.

Why Design Matters – The Lehigh Valley Zoo

admin — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 18:22:49 +0000

This ad captured my attention while I was going through the paper earlier today and I’d like to share some thoughts with you about design.

Notice the great use of space around the text which gives your eyes some relief as you read the headline. The ad also has great hierarchy, in that the headline is the biggest text followed by the sub head ‘Sleep at the Zoo’ The details about the event don’t become important until AFTER you pull the reader into the ad. Which is how good design is supposed to work.

The photography of the owl and the moon play nicely off of each other and the logo at the bottom pulls it all together. I also really love the font choice for Explore + Snore.

While there are examples of great ads in our paper everyday, this one really grabbed me and it just goes to show that you can still put a lot of information into an ad as long as it’s designed properly, it will be viewed.

Kudos to Sarah Sterner who designed this wonderful ad.

Why Design Matters – iPhone Newsreader App

admin — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 20:51:19 +0000

I have attached the full-page ad in our new campaign promoting the iPhone newsreader app. This campaign was launched on Dec. 25 with a spadea wrapping the paper. We also created rack cards, along with a digital billboard on Route 22. However, the bulk of the ads have been running in our print product. Ann Williams of The Media Arts Group designed what I believe to be a very effective and elegant piece of communication. The QR codes shown at the bottom of the ad, once scanned by a user’s phone, will take him or her directly to the Apple store or Blackberry website to begin downloading the app to the device. As I’ve stated numerous times before, great design and great results are not mutually exclusive. Below is a tracking summary that was compiled by Michael Duck, community manager in Editorial.

The latest word from Apple is that our free iPhone newsreader app has been downloaded 2,821 times so far.Also, the iPhone app QR code has been scanned 546 times to date, including 172 scans on Christmas Day when it appeared in the spadea. (For comparison, that’s more than twice the 79 people who scanned the high school football playoff preview video QR code on its best day.) The BlackBerry QR code, by the way, was scanned 206 times, with 70 completed on Christmas Day. It’s also worth noting that The Baltimore Sun, despite being 2.8 to 3 times our size, has seen its paid app downloaded 3,981 times. If you adjust for the size of our market, we’re way ahead of them.Before the iPhone app campaign launched, we had a rough projection of 1,500 to 2,000 downloads. To revise those figures, I’ve gone through the metrics for all the other Tribune papers with free newsreader apps, comparing their app downloads against factors such as average daily page views, mobile site page views, mobile device unique users and even Twitter followers. By nearly every metric, we could have expected to see 2,000 to 3,000 app downloads.

In other words: Measured proportionally, we’re on track to outperform most of the other markets!
The highest, outlier projection numbers indicate we might be able to reach 3,500 to 4,000 downloads. If we continue with plans for a renewed marketing push later this month when the Android app debuts, those numbers start to look pretty achievable.”

So, while we’re still in the early phase of the campaign and there’s more advertising planned, I wanted to
illustrate that good design coupled with a good marketing strategy will always drive results.

Creatively yours,

William Childs