It’s at the bottom of the food chain.

Ask creatives to name their preferred medium, and most will – of course – say television. As James Ranscombe, president and creative director of Toronto-based Ranscombe & Co. points out, creative people like to make a big splash, and what better place to do that than on TV?

Next in line would be magazine, and close behind it outdoor – everybody loves a great big billboard, right?

Then there’s newspaper. A full page? Great! Half a page? It’ll do. A quarter-page? Well, if there’s nothing else available, fine. But a small-space ad? You’ve got to be kidding – why not just stick post-it notes in phone booths?

It’s a shame, really, that so many people in the business feel this way, Ranscombe says. Because there’s no rule that says the size of the ad format necessarily limits the scope for creativity.

Ranscombe, for one, enjoys the opportunity to find out just how big an impact one can make in a small space. Witness the work his agency did several years ago on behalf of Toronto’s Basic Funeral Alternatives (‘Last chance to save’), or its more recent effort for the Sony Zuma digital cell phone (see below).

The most common mistake that advertisers make in small-space ads is trying to say too much, he contends. ‘The temptation is to treat it as if it’s a full-page ad and put in a ton of stuff. But killing the white space will kill a small-space ad. You’ve got to maintain some white space, and find a way to create visual interest.’

Small-space advertising can compensate for its size, Ranscombe says. The trick is to find some way of being brasher or brighter or more unusual than what surrounds it.

‘You can’t allow yourself to be overshadowed,’ he says. ‘You really have to be a Mickey Rooney, to have a stand-up-and-shout kind of attitude. Wallflowers don’t make it in small-space.’

Karen Howe, creative director with Toronto’s Due North Communications, says that simplification is also important.

‘Small-space is not unlike outdoor, in that it forces you to distill your message,’ she says. ‘You can’t hide behind paragraphs of copy. It really imposes a discipline upon you. Before you put something on the page, whether it’s a whole line or just a word, you have to ask yourself: ‘Do we really need this?”

Creatives who dismiss the format out of hand, Howe says, just aren’t using their imaginations.

‘Some people say, ‘If it’s not a full page, it’s not worth doing.’ But you can really do a lot with a small-space ad if you rise to the challenge.’

In this feature, we profile some recent examples of successful small-space campaigns.

Sony Zuma

Sometimes the best way to make people notice your product is not to show it at all.

That, anyway, was the creative rationale behind last fall’s newspaper campaign for the Sony Zuma.

The Zuma is the smallest digital cell phone currently available on the market, says James Ranscombe, president and creative director of Ranscombe & Co., the Toronto-based agency responsible for the campaign. Sony of Canada wanted to emphasize the size of the product – so Ranscombe hit upon the idea of running a series of small-space ads, in which the phone would be hidden behind small, everyday objects such as a coffee cup, a sandwich and a deck of cards.

In all, half a dozen different executions ran in dailies across the country. Only in one, which appeared during the final phase of the campaign, did consumers actually glimpse the Zuma itself. In the others, all that can be seen is the antenna, peeping from behind the object in the foreground.

As Ranscombe points out, there are a lot of cellular phones on the market at present, and one looks pretty much like any other. So concealing the product was, arguably, the smartest way to pique reader interest.

‘If we’d run a typical ad at a typical size, showing a visual of the phone, it would have risked becoming wallpaper,’ Ranscombe says. ‘But not seeing the phone made you want to see the phone. And the unusual visuals helped make it interesting.’

The decision to use small-space newspaper ads was in part the function of a modest budget, Ranscombe says. But the choice of format also allowed for multiple executions – which in turn helped to create the impression of a bigger campaign. The media strategy stressed frequency, with ads appearing on a daily basis for the full duration.

The preliminary word from the Sony sales force is that this campaign did generate an impressive response – proof, Ranscombe says, that small-space ads can prove powerful when the concept is something people haven’t seen before.

‘Newspapers tend to favour big splashes,’ he says. ‘So the trick with small-space is finding a way to get it noticed.’

Ethical Funds

In recent years, RRSP season has turned into something of a free-for-all. Anxious to win the hearts and minds of investors, mutual fund companies are competing ever more furiously to see who can be the biggest and boldest.

In the midst of this fray, Vancouver-based Ethical Funds has chosen the ‘less is more’ approach. Their national newspaper campaign for the 1999 RRSP season consisted entirely of small-space banner ads.

Economics played a part in the choice of ad format. But the use of small-space also permitted the development of a number of different creative executions, says Friso Halbertsma, senior art director for Vancouver agency Glennie Stamnes Strategy, which handles the Ethical Funds account.

‘We felt that we could achieve the best economy by being able to rotate the creative,’ he says.

Ethical Funds offers investors the opportunity to put their money where their conscience is, by screening its investments to exclude companies involved in producing military weapons, tobacco or nuclear power, or that have poor labour and environmental practices.

The RRSP-season campaign, which ran from mid-January through the end of February, used provocative visuals to underline the fund company’s point of difference.

One ad, for example, featured a photograph of a young militia fighter brandishing an automatic rifle, with the headline ‘No loads. No regrets.’ Another, which depicted rusting barrels of toxic waste, asked ‘Is this your return on investment?’

Getting noticed at RRSP time is a considerable feat these days – especially with small-space ads, says Bruce Fraser, director of creative services with Glennie Stamnes. But the contemporary look of the advertising and the frank imagery helped the campaign stand out in a category still dominated by staid, old-fashioned creative.

‘This is not a retired couple standing on a dock by the lake, or a picture of a globe in somebody’s hands,’ he says.

Working with a larger format, it’s easier to make an impact by virtue of sheer physical presence alone, Halbertsma says. In small-space, the challenge is to achieve a more striking effect through the visual and headline.

The task is further complicated in the mutual fund category, Fraser adds, because room must also be made for the disclaimers that are mandatory in any advertising that features rates of return.

‘When you’re tight for copy and white space already, and then you’ve got to squeeze in a seven- or eight-line legal disclaimer at the bottom, it’s tough,’ he says.

Young & Grunier

If there’s anybody who ought to appreciate the importance of maximizing an investment, it’s an accountant.

When Toronto-based chartered accounting firm Young & Grunier set about planning their newspaper campaign, they knew that the limited budget precluded anything terribly extravagant. Basically, it was small-space ads or nothing.

A lot of clients would have attempted to compensate by cramming their tiny ads with as much copy as they possibly could, says Karen Howe, creative director at Due North Communications, the agency responsible for the campaign. But Young & Grunier recognized that their money would be wasted unless the advertising took a more compelling tack.

‘A small space is very challenging to try to own,’ says Howe. ‘So what we had to do was come up with a provocative, headline-driven campaign that would triumph over the smallness of the space.’

Young & Grunier specializes in accounting services for companies in the advertising and television production industries. Their campaign is slated to run in trade newspapers – including Strategy’s sister publication Playback – right through 1999.

Due North created ten executions in all, which will appear on a rotating basis.

Howe says the client wanted to communicate in an irreverent tone that people in the target audience would appreciate. The result is a series of headlines that include ‘Because handcuffs chafe,’ ‘There are two things in life you should never fake. One is taxes,’ and ‘More comfortable than one of those weird cubicles in a shopping mall.’

‘Nobody expects accountants to talk that way,’ she says. ‘But these guys are in the business of translating money into terms that creative people can understand. And they wanted their advertising to reflect that fact – that they’re not a bunch of stuffed shirts talking financial gobbledygook.’

The large number of executions is key to the strategy, Howe says. It should help keep the campaign fresh, adding to its staying power.

Subtle design touches also help the ads overcome their modest dimensions. As Howe points out, most small-space ads tend to be squared-off – and many don’t have any sort of border to help them hold the space. So Due North art director Jeff Wilbee added a solid border with rounded corners to the Young & Grunier ads.

‘That really helps to lift it off the page,’ Howe says. ‘It’s the old rule: If others are zigging, you try to zag.’

Also in this report:

– Sleeman: Atypical ads for an atypical audience p.29

– Quebec Milk Producers play on emotional ties p.31

– La Presse classifieds make unique pitch p.31