An outstanding product. A simple, elegant creative idea. A superb execution.
Put all those things together… and sometimes reality will still bite you on the ass. So Duncan Bruce and his colleagues at TBWA Chiat/Day in Toronto discovered recently.
The product? The new line of gaoo televisions from Panasonic Canada. The idea? To fill an entire double-page newspaper spread with an image of a big, black gaoo set. The execution? Pretty damned impressive.
And the result? Well, if at first you don’t succeed…
The gaoo ad ran in major dailies across the country during the month of September.
Bruce, creative director for Chiat/Day, says the challenge was to find some way of communicating the line’s superior picture quality – not an easy thing to put across persuasively in newspaper.
Eventually, senior copywriter Brett Channer and his partner, senior art director Gary Holme, hit upon the idea of filling virtually the entire ad space with a shot of the product itself. The headline consisted of a single word – ‘Wow!’ – in small type at the centre of the screen. Two brief lines of copy at the very bottom of the page described gaoo’s digital capabilities.
‘We could have filled the ad full of copy about how the tube works, how the colors are projected, how sharp the image is, and so on,’ Bruce says. ‘But basically, all the consumer needs to know is that gaoo has the clearest, strongest picture. And so we thought it would be more impactful to open a double-page spread and see a big, black tv set sitting right there in your lap.’
Or it would have been, had the image reproduced at all well.
At one time, it wouldn’t have even been worth attempting something like this in newspaper. But in recent years, Bruce says, the overall quality of reproduction in Canadian dailies has improved dramatically – and that encouraged the agency to give the idea a shot.
Unfortunately, the image ran far too dark the first time out, undermining much of the hoped-for impact.
‘I think we overestimated slightly the ability of newspapers to handle the subtleties of what we were trying to do,’ Bruce says. ‘It was a miscalculation on our part to try to be that strong, dark and dominant on the page.’
Still smarting from the disappointment of that failed first attempt, the agency went back and proceeded to make some major adjustments – retouching the image, trying out various linescreens. Several experiments later, they had a version that – while slightly less dramatic than the original – would reproduce acceptably.
‘I think we got it right in the end,’ Bruce says. ‘It was just a lesson to be learned: You’ve still got to be careful in newspaper.’
Despite the gaoo mishap, Bruce still considers newspaper reproduction quality to be on the rise. And he praises the dailies for their responsiveness after problems arose on this particular project.
‘They helped us through it,’ he says. ‘They didn’t just say, ‘Oh well, it ran dark, too bad.’ They worked with us to make it happen properly, and I was impressed by that.’
Also in this special report:
– Dailies still in the Dark Ages, say media directors: Despite the imminent arrival of a deep-pocketed competitor, Canadian dailies have remained largely oblivious to the needs of advertisers, planners and buyers charge p.27
– Service the new watchword, say dailies: While they admit they’re not there yet, executives at Canada’s daily newspapers say they’ve made huge strides toward their goal of better accommodating advertisers p.29
– Demand outstrips supply at Post: New national daily to honor FP’s advertising commitments p.29
– Great writers lend name to Chapters: Newspaper essays by well-known authors encourage consumers to widen their reading tastes p.32
