Advertising > Print

Downtown Mooresville had an aggressive line-up of events planned to lure foot traffic. There was something for every season. While we set up an events page on the newly branded website and drove eyeball traffic there with online ads and social media, we also had to cover the bases in print. Which, by the way, was way more fun than the online stuff because we got to write cute little seasonal headlines that intro’d that month’s event schedule.

FINAL: What I send the pubs and what the pubs eventually print. It looks deceivingly simple, was actually a colossal pain for everyone, and was totally worth it for the way it tied all the dispirit ads together so they worked under Downtown’s brand.

At the same time, Mooresville’s newspapers (the Mooresville Tribune and the Charlotte Observer) had had sales reps stomping around town collecting Downtown business to place small space ads at a reduced price which would run in a special dedicated full page. You know the menagerie I’m talking about. So not only did they need a quarter page template for events, but also a template that said “All these terrible ads are from businesses in Downtown Mooresville”. Well, not exactly that, but you know what I mean.

I worked on a lot of templatized ads in my early creative career in San Francisco (Parc 55 Hotels, Scandinavian Designs (an early IKEA), KPIX Channel 5, etc.) but none of it was as convoluted as what we did for Downtown.

BEFORE: This is what the pubs were doing for Downtown before. All over the map, right? From Easter to Christmas, every ad was wildly different. — **BEFORE:** This is what the pubs were doing for Downtown before. All over the map, right? From Easter to Christmas, every ad was wildly different.

See, here’s how it worked before – The pubs had been doing these full page gangups forever. There’s a full-page ad that measured X by X, and the sales reps would try to fill it with as many small space ads as they could muster up from the small businesses Downtown. Then the pub’s art department would write, design and produce all those small ads to standard sizing that would fill the page. The Downtown Commission (AKA neighborhood, mall or whatever) usually gets a quarter page’s worth of branding space. Unless of course, the reps come up short on sales. Then they add whatever they couldn’t sell to the branding space, free of charge. Usually it doesn’t make that much of a difference because the paper is also designing the branding bit, too. You could just hand over your branding assets (which everyone did), but good luck getting anything consistent from month to month beyond getting your logo somewhere on the page next to a giant headline in a random font yelling “EASTER TIME DOWNTOWN” or “MERRY CHRISTMAS”, along with a shit ton of clip art. I wanted to change that.

FINAL: On the left is what I’d get from a newspaper rep. An phone snap of their hand-drawn schematic. Then I’d lay that all out and fill the spot they left for Downtown with seasonal goodies. This one was pushing gifts Downtown for Mother’s Day. — **FINAL:** On the left is what I’d get from a newspaper rep. An phone snap of their hand-drawn schematic. Then I’d lay that all out and fill the spot they left for Downtown with seasonal goodies. This one was pushing gifts Downtown for Mother’s Day.

Only by working REALLY closely with the sales reps, was I able to get what I wanted. It was time-consuming, but also fun, because I knew no one else (like neighboring downtown Statesville or downtown Davidson) would ever think of doing it. I wouldn’t design all the small space ads, but I designed a template to lay behind them. I also designed a solution for the standard size we were given for our branded space, but it hardly ever worked out that way. Sometimes we had a little more space, and sometimes a LOT more space. For the underlying template to be visible and tie everything up in a tidy package, the small space ads had to be a teeny bit smaller than their standard sizes. And that’s what wrecked all kinds of havoc from the production department to their billing system. It was super inconvenient for the bean counters, but they still let me do it.

FINAL: Sometimes we’d get a lot of space, and sometimes very little. So we had to be flexible with whatever we were promoting that month. We also had a lot of fun with the attention-getting headlines. — **FINAL:** Sometimes we’d get a lot of space, and sometimes very little. So we had to be flexible with whatever we were promoting that month. We also had a lot of fun with the attention-getting headlines.

Each publication would send me a list of the total ad space and individual ad sizes they were able to sell. Whatever was left over, I’d get to use for the branding. Then I’d build a full page template with white boxes representing where their production artists should place the small space ads. Then, I’d go to town filling out the space that was left with what Downtown wanted to promote: a specific event; the complete event schedule for the month; or maybe just an ad about the charms of Downtown Mooresville. It was a pain, but I was totally right. No other competitor to Downtown Mooresville did it. And our stuff most always ran simultaneously during the big shopping months. The bigger, “more sophisticated” city’s ad looked like shit compared to ours. It was not only hilarious, but it really went a long way toward making Downtown look special. Oh, and as a super-double bonus, I eventually managed to get all the local magazines to do the same thing with me. Hahahaha.