A full-page newspaper ad for an interesting new Internet service plays a guessing game with readers – and loses
The next army of protesters you see marching down Pennsylvania Avenue waving signs may well be the Copywriters of America.
Sinister Alliance
They will be protesting the sinister alliance of two powerful forces bent on world domination of print advertising: (1) advertisers and/or agencies that believe nobody is willing to read copy longer than one paragraph anymore, and (2) art directors who consider copy a nuisance that gets in the way of award-winning design.
The former often insist on copy so short and cryptic that you’re not sure what the ad is talking about. And if the copywriter does manage to sneak a reasonable amount of fairly good copy into the ad, the art director (am I boring you with this by complaining about it too often?) makes sure it can’t be read by setting it in wide-measure 7-point sans serif white letters superimposed on a halftone or a dark tint block.
No-Copy Forces Win Out
In this month’s makeover subject, a full-page newspaper ad for a new Web site called EdificeRex.com, the no-copy-at-all forces prevailed.
This would have been regrettable, but not fatal, if really powerful display type had managed to sum up the nature and virtue of the site with a few extremely well-chosen and sharply targeted words.
But what actually ran was so vague and unspecific that it left readers scratching their heads in puzzlement. Ah, but that’s just the point, don’t you see? They will be forced to go online to satisfy their curiosity! (If, that is, they have nothing better to do with their time than fritter it away tracking down the meaning of damn-fool ads.)
But It’s a Good Idea…
Too bad. EdificeRex.com actually has a rather interesting idea for an Internet service – a site devoted not only to the attractions and problems of your own city, but also the residents, staff, records and goings-on of your own apartment building (if it’s signed up for EdificeRex.com service).
And it’s quite well explained on the home page (in long copy that nobody reads any more, set in squinty type half as large as in my makeover) and in a handsome brochure sent to residents of EdificeRex.com buildings.
I have borrowed and boiled down as much of this copy as I had room for in my makeover.
That Mondrian Feeling
The Mondrian design is a visual theme that EdificeRex has adopted as part of its image. That’s OK by me, so I’ve tried to keep the Mondrian feeling, although M. Mondrian would undoubtedly wince at my travesty of his design principles. (Listen, nobody’s perfect.)
My makeover shows the 10 subject buttons you’ll see if you visit the site. But if you’re a resident of an EdificeRex building, and register using the I.D. number you were sent in the mail with your brochure, you will then see an 11th button at the top labeled “The Building.”
So read the text of my makeover. And then you decide – which version would make you more likely to visit and use the EdificeRex Web site?
Network
