As Seen In US AD REVIEW
Reprinted with Permission from USADREVIEW #26, April 1998
LYNNE MEENA’s CREATIVE SPOTLIGHT P.179
Are newspapers an effective medium for creative advertising?
Ask Saatchi & Saatchi and Procter & Gamble.
Guess where this ad appeared. In Good Housekeeping magazine?
Parenting? Family Circle? Nope. Another hint. What medium never
ever carries a national product ad that’s pure image branding.
No copy. No headline. No coupon. Still don’t know? Brace yourself
for the answer: the daily newspaper. This charming
ad showed up on Halloween on the lower quarter page of several
of the big dailies across the nation. For a minute, I thought
I had been transported back to the 1950’s, in the days of yesteryear
when the newspaper was the undisputed king of advertising, in
an era before television was the place for branding dish soap
and laundry detergent. Long before advertisers and ad agencies
felt the only way to use newspaper as a one-shot was to announce
something new. Or run a coupon.
Well, it’s 1998. Newspapers now publish in color. They are learning how to be user friendly to national advertisers. Newspaper driven companies like the NNN (Newspaper National Network) are pitching the glories of the daily newspaper to clients. And it’s starting to pay off.
Otherwise, we would not have seen this charming reminder from Procter and Gamble for Tide. So folks, now you have it. Branding can be done in the newspaper. It can be done with impact when the newspaper is used correctly. It can be done with timing. For example, this ad appeared in the food pages on Thursday, the day before Halloween. Many consumers still refer to the food section before the big weekly trip to the supermarket. You pay a little more to be in specialsections of the newspaper, but the payoff is there. LM
Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising
Exec. CD: David Levine
AD: Adam Hunt
CW: Tim Brown
Illus: Gary Baseman
Client: Procter & Gamble/Tide