Also in this report:

* Star attempts a giant leap: Media behemoth aims to prove it can be more friendly, accommodating p.B1

* Boomers love their papers: study p.B1

* Southam shifts under Black’s influence: Increasingly, the prevailing attitude is ‘every paper for itself’ – especially when it comes to advertising sales p.B2

* Community papers speaking from the heart: Joint campaign stresses weeklies’ emotional appeal p.B5

* Eaton’s uses newspaper to herald renewal p.B7

For this latest instalment of Strategy’s ‘Spotlight on É’ feature, we turned to Jim Ranscombe, president and creative director of Toronto-based Ranscombe & Co., for his views on current newspaper advertising. The approach he chose was, shall we say, unconventional.

I love newspapers. Maybe it was five years of delivering 84 papers a day, covered with black ink to the elbows. Maybe it was the tricks I learned selling newspaper ad space for Lord Thomson of Fleet. Example: Client finds a typo in his ad. Response: In front of said client, fold the entire newspaper in half, then quarters, then eighths, producing a gruesome handful of newsprint the rough equivalent of a 300-page novel. Who could complain about a single typo when we put out a ‘novel’ like this six days a week? Gimme a break: one lousy typo! Oh, weary tv sales reps, try that with an irate advertiser.

So it is with some dismay that I have come to review the ads found in my beloved newspapers. Who does one squarely nail? Spare? Laud?

Great campaigns come and go, but bad advertising is always with us. So let’s look at the Best of The Bad – those ads that are the very backbone of the daily newspaper: Ads that are so pun-free, so straightforward, so gaudy, so universal (I know, I checked eight foreign newspapers), that they must work.

Here goes.

1. The Fresh Breath Clinic

Who with bad breath, bad taste or – heaven forbid – both could ignore this ad? A mere 80 lines small, next to a full-page department store ad, this little beauty stole the spread. And you know, I will wager that the world is a sweeter-smelling place for it.

The copy contained only a smidgen of typographical bombast. One line included a capitalized ‘we’ as in ‘it’s good to know we can help’ – and what my kids refer to as an ‘explanation mark’ – as in ‘Let us help you make a change!’ But still.

I also counted two puns.

Number one: ‘…get the root of your bad breath problem…’ (See, it’s not me with this darn halitosis, it’s a dental thing – a root!)

Number two: In what is arguably the only legitimate plagiarism of the famous vodka theme line ‘Smirnoff leaves you breathless,’ The Fresh Breath Clinic says, ‘What we do will leave you Breathless.’ Oh well.

There is a Thunder Bay location, too, so you need never fear that ill wind from the North.

Ouch Rating from 0 to -10: -1

2. Bad Boy

Here’s an outfit that started 30 years ago with a monkey dressed in prison stripes, and has had the courage to stay the course. Of course, the first monkey made his millions and left retailing to enter the jungle of municipal politics.

Mel Lastman and little Mel Jr. are nothing if not shameless self-promoters who have produced an endless stream of four-color newspaper ads no self respecting art director would allow within a million agate lines of his or her portfolio. Still (and I italicize in the full spirit of retail advertising), these ads sell. Lastman Jr. is surely on his way to fame and fortune, following in Dad’s footsteps.

May they enjoy continued success. After all, who’s better? Ask your kids, your nanny, your brother-in-law who’s been in solitary for the past 17 years, your friggin’ pooch: nooooobody! Case closed.

Ouch Rating from 0 to -10: -5

3. Briar Hill

Fear not old age, dear consumer. When you finally reach the golf years, there will be an ‘adult-style community’ ad waiting, walker in hand, to usher you to the course.

Lately, daily newspapers surround entire sections of editorial with ads from adult communities where everything – everything – will be taken care of for you. This frees you up to live out your final years with others who, like yourself, look as though they have just stepped from the pages of a stock photography book. You will golf. You will ride a bicycle down a leafy lane. You will sit at dining tables while smiling servers hover attentively.

What I would really love to see in these ads is real people not smiling. How about a diaper service truck? How about a dinner party where everyone is clearly tanked and having a ball? How about a person of color? No, when it comes to ads showing how you will spend your golden twilight years, we have miles to go before we sleep, miles to go before we sleep.

Ouch Rating from 0 to -10: -10

4. Marvin Starr Pontiac Buick Cadillac

ok, I am guilty as charged. As a newspaper ad space salesperson, a big part of my job was going through the clip art books and putting together ads that looked just awful. The headline ‘prices slashed,’ for example, would have had an axe cutting a swath through it.

In a small-town paper, these gimmicks worked like gangbusters. I am astonished to find that the big boys at the big dailies still use the same bad clip art I used years ago.

All the ads in this ghastly genre pass the ‘quarter’ test once used by the president of one of the Big Three auto makers: If you can place a 25-cent piece anywhere on the ad and it’s not touching copy, the ad is not busy enough.

Still, as longtime car dealer Marvin Starr Pontiac Buick Cadillac and a host of others have proved, simply by staying in business, these ads work! So here’s a lesson to all you copywriters and art directors for your next newspaper campaign: Don’t be so clever! Let the newspapers set your ads, save your clients some money, and retire to the bar.

Ouch Rating from 0 to -10: -25