Where Is the Line? (On Advertorials and Front Page Ads)

No one would claim that the garden variety advertorial is a journalistic endeavor. Situated alongside a publication’s content, however, it can often be mistaken as real – especially if designers have taken great pains to replicate font, layout and details.

Advertorials happen. They happen all the time. Whether you think they’re effective or misleading, you probably rarely give them a second thought.

That is, until they begin appearing on your front page.

Alice In Wonderland

Historically, newspapers and magazines have held the front page as an Advertising Free Zone. It only makes sense. No one buys a publication because of the ads on the front; they look to the cover as a de facto table of contents. That’s where the impulse to purchase is created.

But with the decline in advertising revenues, publications have begun allowing more and more leeway. Small banner ads appear near the bottom of the front page. Plastic covers promote wireless services. Post-it notes offer coupons. Ads are creeping into that valuable space, precisely because it’s valuable. Precisely because magazines and newspapers can’t sell the insides as much as they once could.

So, you can imagine, if you offer a newspaper $700,000 to print a full front-page wrap, there’s a good chance they’re going to take it.

That’s what Disney did with the Los Angeles Times. The ad – a four-page wrap that mimicked the Times’ front page – was designed to “create buzz, and to extend the film’s already brilliant marketing campaign,” said John Conroy, spokesman for the Times. It also pushed the day’s headlines to a second page.

It’s not the first time the Times has slipped advertising in under the radar. Last April, an ad for NBC’s Southland gave only minimal indication that it was, indeed, an advertisement – and that was long after the “article” would have been read.

Newspapers: a Vehicle for Journalism or Advertising?

Which begs the question: where is the line? When does journalism begin and advertising end?

According to the American Society of Magazine Editors, ads and editorial content require a clear separation, and front-page ads not allowed. But when faced with the decision between selling a lucrative front cover ad and the ASME’s minimal repercussions (a letter or reprimand and exclusion from the National Magazine Awards), there’s often no more than the approval of a publisher standing in the way.

More than anything, newspaper and magazine readers place their trust in the publications they’re consuming. When ads are placed in a way that blurs the line between editorial and advertising – when advertisers seek to gain attention through deception by designing an ad that looks like real content - that trust is taken advantage of.

In other words, the content of the ads should be considered – not the location.

The Times ad reaches the news outlets because it’s on the front page. But it’s clearly an ad. It steers clear of deception simply because it’s too big to be believable. No one read that and thought, “this is a Los Angeles Times article about the movie.”

However, an advertorial clearly wants to be seen as content. Its entire premise is dependent upon a reader seeing it as an article. Posing as something it’s not, the advertorial plays upon the trust of the reader.

In other words, outrage seems to be misguided because the definition is so hazy. The line is smudged. Possibly irreparably. And it’s up to us – as advertisers and publishers – to, once and for all, redraw the line. Clean it up. Set some standards.

The balance, really, stands between editorial honor and the need to keep the lights on. We can take sides, fighting against either the stuffiness of journalistic integrity or the demons of advertising greed. But both sides have their arguments. Because without determining where that line is – the line between honorable content and the advertising that helps pay for it – we may lose the trust of our readership.

On Deadlines

Deadlines are the bane of a creative’s existence.

They signify a finish, a point at which the creative process stops and the technicalities begin. Everything leads to that deadline, and as time approaches, stress builds.

It’s the nature of the business. And it’s what makes a good number of us thrive.

Sometimes, our deadlines are far away. We’re afforded a large chunk of time with which to make magic happen. But most of the time, however, we’re on tight deadlines. Publications and print dates and special events and product launches are all tied to a specific date, and to that specific date our marketing and advertising materials must coincide.

Deadlines are a bane. But they’re also a framework and a promise.

So when a super hot job lands on our doorstep, sometimes there are only a few hours available to plan, design and implement. Take, for example, the case of a recent Web project we handled for the South Dakota State University Foundation.

With site design approved on Tuesday, there was but a crazy overnight coding session holding it back from getting to them by Wednesday. And it was done. Four days later, after content was entered, the site was live.

What what?

Listen, none of us want to work on midnight oil deadlines. But sometimes, they happen. And when they do, there’s a certain feeling of accomplishment – and dedication – that drives us to turn it around in an emergency.

It’s a deadline. They’re the bane of our existence. But, they’re also what makes the industry so exiting, and, in a way, what makes it so rewarding.

What what, indeed.

Another batch of Wolff Olins snake oil

AOL (or, I guess, Aol.) revealed a new logo treatment today.

You can look elsewhere to see what the overall consensus is. (My take: What. A. Joke.)

That being said, there’s a bit of inconsistency that proves Wolff Olins’ ability to b.s. their way through a logo design.

From AOL’s press release:

“Historically brand identity has been monolithic and CONTROLLING, little more than stamping a company name on a product. AOL is a 21st century media company, with an ambitious vision for the future and new focus on creativity and expression, this required the new brand identity to be open and generous, to invite conversation and collaboration, and to feel credible, but also aspirational.” said Karl Heiselman, CEO of Wolff Olins.

Their solution, naturally: stamp the company name onto a handful of stock images.

Come on, guys. After the London 2012 debacle, don’t you think we should be trying a little harder? I mean, THE LEAST YOU COULD DO is make sure the fluffy, inspirational quote defending your work isn’t at odds with the nature of the work itself.

What Montana taught us about design

It happens what seems like a million times in what seems like a million meetings around the world. Over-designing. Too many gradients and too much color and seven different fonts and a billion little bullet points and a few logos – one for each sponsor, as well as one for the company itself – and suddenly…

Ugh.

You and I know better. But that doesn’t mean we can stick it to some group of design non-believers with a list of the Seven Deadly Design Rules and force them to submit. We have to understand that, sometimes, circumstances require us to be creative in our application, that, sometimes, those bullets are necessary and that extra typeface is needed and those logos are untouchable.

Then again, sometimes, we need to stop, step back, strip it all down and reconvene with the bare basics.

Believe it or not, sometimes, it works.

Today’s example: the State of Montana.

After years of diverging license plate designs, ugly pastels, a roster of causes (105 in all, not counting University-specific plates) and, yes, what seems like a million typefaces, Montana took its recent history of over-design and wiped it clean.

A lack of consistency? Gone. A full palette of colors? Gone. A feeling of retro freshness that will hopefully inspire others (including Nebraska, of whom we will only say, “Please. Hire. Designers. Next. Time.”)?

Absolutely.

(Photo via greatfallstribune.com, ©AP Photo/Matt Gouras)

Great design doesn’t mean doing the most with what you have. It means doing the best with what you need.

Thanks be to Montana for reminding us.

(via: Design Observer, which was via: W Magazine)

The Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce Annual Meeting - A Recap.

What does it take to put on the Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce Annual Meeting?

It starts during the summer. Themes are discussed, a stage is mocked up, and a speaker is booked. This year, the Chamber’s theme revolved around the consistent exposure Sioux Falls receives as both a business-friendly city and a place with high quality of life. The forerunner in this praise: Forbes Magazine.

So the natural choice for a speaker? Steve Forbes.

Throughout the summer and into September, the staging is finalized, the design is set and the invites start going out. Schedules are coordinated, extra help is brought in. We build monster set pieces. It’s like being in Play Production, except the stage is massive and the talent does more than botch lines from As You Like It.

As we get closer to the date, work swirls in a fever pitch. Our building is filled with staging pipes and banners – printed in house by Jason – and speeches pass over an entire series of desks. Video reaches the final stages of production, and a handful of lucky HSers work late into the night.

And then, it’s the week of the show.

Though the program is Tuesday night, we begin setting up Sunday morning. The stage takes a day and a half to erect, video is double- and triple-checked, and the HS Dancers go through their final run-throughs. A skeleton crew stays back at the office while the real action occurs at the Sioux Falls Convention Center in a flurry of construction, rehearsal and anticipation.

An hour before the show begins, you’d have no idea that this has been a process of months. When the lights go down, you’re seeing the end of the work, and the beginning of a grand celebration of the area we call home.

By the end of the next day, it’s all gone. The room is ready for the next event. Hopefully, you attended. And hopefully, you gained a new appreciation for everything the Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce does for us – not just businesses, but everyone.

If you could believe it, that’s not even the end. Because chances are, we’re already looking toward next year’s show.

SEO vs. Content: Not a Battle After All

Search Engine Optimization gets people to your site. It boosts your page rank. It performs magic tricks, prints money and cures cancer. It’s the golden god of content management, at times, and it’s the number one goal of a company: get your name out there, and get it noticed.

If I sound a little sarcastic, you’ll have to understand that I’m a writer. Which means I have one goal over any other: create interesting content.

It’s this goal that makes me cringe when people say that SEO is the most important part of putting together a successful Web site; that copy should be manufactured with the robotic eyes of a search engine in mind.

And it’s this goal that often leads me astray, railing against SEO in the name of art and literature and everything the act of writing stands for.

Because the truth is – SEO isn’t king. And neither is content, anymore. Seems that both have to work in harmony.

See? Now I’ve just upset both sides of the debate.

There are two arguments in the battle. For SEO champions, it’s, “If your content is good, but no one sees it, is it worth it?” And for the content wonks, it’s “If you get people to your site, but they aren’t interested in staying, is it worth it?”

The real answer lies somewhere in between. It isn’t all or nothing for either side. You need both. In fact, one should naturally lead to another. Great content should generate positive SEO, as great content relies on communicating in a way that gives the reader exactly what they came for. And great SEO means you’re covering all of your bases – that you’re thinking for the masses instead of your little corner of intelligentsia.

It means more than compiling lists of regurgitated facts and keyword-laden copy. Conversely, it means more than developing beautiful prose more akin to Steinbeck than Sergey. It’s right in the middle. It’s what we sought out when we redesigned our Web site. And it’s helped us in both cases: better content and better search results.

No, it’s not SEO über alles. Nor is it content without regard to searchability. Simply put, it’s writing the way people will read. Will think. Will care. It’s managing content logically and creatively.

It’s copy written for robots and people. How futuristic. Are you doing it?

A Web Message From HenkinSchultz

(And now a message from the corporate sponsor…)

We’d like to take a moment to re-introduce www.HenkinSchultz.com.

What? Re-introduce? Huh?

Well, yeah. We’ve re-designed the site. It’s been up for a few weeks, but this is the official launch, my friends, so let’s rock this joint.

But it’s more than a re-design. It’s a re-imagining of what our Web site is here for: namely, providing content to current and potential clients and the community as a whole. Our clients wanted more access to the awesomeness we’re providing, and we were happy to oblige.

So we’ve got constantly updated portfolios, HenkinSchultz’s Greatest Hits, easy contact to all of our other outlets – Facebook, Twitter, Post Haste – and the same devotion to our people.

It works because we’re all in on it. Every employee has a chance to update as necessary. It’s crowdsourcing at its best: when it works together for one common goal and not against each other for a cheap fix.

So welcome. We like what’s going on over at www.HenkinSchultz.com. And we hope you do too.

(We return you to your regularly scheduled Post Haste post.)

A Letter to Your Customers

Letters of Note compiles famous and important letters from famous and important people. As you can imagine, some are staggering in their meaning – Ghandi’s letter to Hitler, for instance, or the letter Winston Churchill wrote for his wife in the event of his death.

But, above all, these letters all have one thing in common: they represent communication in its rawest form – words on paper, no sound, no video, no Flash; just the bare bones message of one person’s desires and thoughts.

The art of communication depends on words as much as it does design, technology or media mix. In fact, in this humble copywriter’s opinion, it needs words above anything else.

In marketing, each word is carefully chosen to influence and clarify. When you think about it, every message a business sends out to the public is simply a letter from company to customer. Every ad is an open letter to the viewers. Every Web site is a letter to someone who stumbles upon it.

Which means the decorum of letter writing should always be evident. Are you being clear? Are you presenting an argument for change, or are you simply making a joke? Are you being genuine, or is your message false?

If you were sending your advertisement to someone, would they want to continue correspondence? Are you offering anything worth responding to?

Maybe Hitler didn’t heed Ghandi’s request. But it certainly wasn’t for lack of clarity or influence.

UX by MTLB

We’ve been thinking about the cross between impressive technology and customer usability a lot around the HenkinSchultz offices as of late.

So it’s a pretty awesome surprise that my good friend (in a strictly “blogging-on-the-same-Internet” sense) Bill Green of Make the Logo Bigger summarizes the User Experience discussion in a series of Pac-Man and vehicle side mirror analogies.

From “Why is this user experience [swear word] so hard?”

However, if I want to incorporate more features into my Facebook page, the effort it’s taken hasn’t been worth it. A simple thing like incorporating YouTube videos or my Flickr account has been a major pain. I’ve wasted so much time with what I thought “should” be an easy task, and still not gotten it right.

It’s like Pac Man: I just need to get from Point A to Point B, but instead, I have to do a bunch of stuff first and avoid some very bad things along the way.

Cue endless pokes and virtual beers thank you very much.

(If Pac Man isn’t to your liking, then how about this metaphor: Trying to do something on Facebook is like entering your front door by first going through the garage, then walking around the house.)

Read the rest here. And rock on, Bill Green. Keep fighting the good fight for all of us.

Sandwich Artistry

This past week, Craig and Cami proceeded to take our pre-lunch hunger pains and rake them over the coals of agony as they turned our studio into a veritable sandwich shop for a Dakota Provisions photo shoot. Though we’ve done hundreds (thousands?) of photo shoots, this one was by far the most attractive.

If you like sandwiches, that is.

Check out their sandwich artistry below.

Setting up the shot.

The casting call.

You’d be surprised the difference that one tomato made.

Yeah - that’s a tasty beer in the background.

To see the set, check out our Flickr page.

ProTip: Those tomatoes look pretty fantastic, right? Well, those drops of faux perspiration aren’t coming from the tomato – they’re manufactured. Karo syrup, actually. See? Food photography is both artistic AND educational!

— Next Page »

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About HenkinSchultz

HenkinSchultz is an agency. An advertising and marketing and branding and design and production agency. All of those things, and then some.

But, underneath all that, we're really a bunch of thinkers. As in, we think about stuff, both pertinent and not, with and without boundaries, as if our lives depended on it. And this right here, Post Haste, is where we write about it.

Visit us at http://www.henkinschultz.com.

Twitter

Live from the Business Journal: @MindFlame, @vvi and our very own Joe Henkin. http://bit.ly/d9gJcP

Recent Posts

• Where Is the Line? (On Advertorials and Front Page Ads)
• Being a Realtor on the Web
• On Deadlines
• That plane is really an infographic
• Twitter as a commitment
• A Quick Grammar Break: Brought to you by The Oatmeal.
• A Creative Legend In Our Midst
• Mini’s Trash is Advertising’s Treasure
• On How NOT to Request Attention on the Internet
• The OFFICIAL 2009 Gingerbread Man (Or Woman) Decorating Contest

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