Art Director

In praise of the one-off.

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Print is dead. It’s been replaced by digital content, social content, liquid content, native content, paid content, endorsed content, influencer content, search content and any other NEW medium that houses content that our industry believes will make Millennials content to give up their virtual and real dollar bills. Or likes. Or shares. Or hearts. And if our content goes viral, even better.

Don’t get me wrong — I love that we get to play with a bigger box of crayons. In fact, over the past few years I’ve done more digital than traditional advertising. And, being the tech nerd I am, I’ve loved every minute of it. Which is why, when something like a single print ad comes across my desk, I love working on that even more.

Print is personal. You don’t just download a template off the World Wide Web Super Information Highway, swap out a logo and a few photos, slug in some SEO-friendly copy and then call it a day. Creating a print ad is a much more intimate experience. At least, it is for me.

It reminds me that I don’t have a job; I have a craft. It reinforces my love for a well-written headline over a tweet. And it refuels my drive to make it back into the CA print annual.

Remember when getting in CA was a big deal?

For this Sauder’s Eggs print ad, I didn’t work with a partner. I was the writer, art director and designer. But not by choice. This ad was a freebie for a client quench was hoping to woo into a long-term relationship. It had to be done quickly and on the cheap. There wasn’t even a brief. And I loved every millisecond of the assignment.

More important, the prospective client loved the ad as presented. Not a single change was recommended or made. And I’m grateful to say, Sauder’s Eggs is no longer a prospective quench client. They’re a client. In part because of a one-off print ad that ran on the back cover of a B2B pub with less than 5,000 readers.

A print ad that also happened to take Gold in the 2016 Philadelphia Addy Awards.

So now we’re auditing Sauder’s current website, monitoring their social media channels, and developing their brand strategy that’ll soon inform their content strategy.

Not too shabby for the walking dead, huh?

It's alive! Wait. No. No it isn't.

In August of 2012, Burpee Home Gardens asked my team and I at Bader Rutter to do an ad for early 2013 introducing new flowers to consumers. Our target: women aged 35-55 who enjoyed flowers but didn’t consider themselves adept gardeners. Burpee Home Gardens’ flowers are bred to be easy to grow and tough to kill. Perfect for the target.

But I didn’t want to just do a print ad. Because our target was online, researching plants and gardening tips, I wanted to reach them through Burpee Home Gardens’ social channels — channels managed by another agency.

I recommended we create and shoot easy, do-it-yourself, inspirational garden projects and, from the print ad, point our target to the Burpee Home Gardens Pinterest page where they’d see the videos and get more tips. Then I recommended we use social media to drive even more people to the content. The idea was blessed and off we went to execute — my role was creative director and art director. We shot, we cut, we wrote, we made the comp and shared everything with our client. Smiles all around. A few days later, we got the call.

The un-retouched comp and videos. You can see more of the videos here.

“I just got out of a meeting with my boss and he doesn’t want to run this ad. He wants a more retail-focused ad. And guys, he made it clear, there is no push-back on this.”

When you’ve been in the business a while you learn to get a thick skin. I’ve had more stuff killed than approved but I’d never had approved creative killed. With three weeks before a publication deadline, no less. Our client fought the good fight to keep the campaign alive but her boss didn’t buy into the social strategy. So we rallied and I quickly came up with the headline, layout and design of the ad that did run — barely making the publication date.

The print ad that ran.

There was a time in my career when, in a situation like that, I’d have thrown a hissy fit and taken my ball and gone home. But I’ve mellowed and have learned to keep my ego in check. For me, it’s never fun having work killed. But it’s always fun, no matter the assignment, creating the work.

Got a graveyard yourself? I'd love to hear about it. 

Identity crisis?

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I’m an art director. I’m a copywriter. A traditional creative. A digital creative. I’m in production, account service, account planning, public relations and traditional and social media.

I’m also in the minority.

Every time I see a classified ad for a digital art director, traditional copywriter, digital account planner, etc. I’m reminded that as much as our industry likes to talk about progressing beyond the conventional model, it is still largely built upon silos.

Don’t get me wrong; I believe our business needs specialists. But while specializing in one thing, they should know and be open to all things.

As an art director, I’d much rather spend my time kerning than programming. But I know enough about different platforms and technologies so I can have intelligent conversations with developers and programmers about bringing an idea to life. However, I wanted this site to look and function very simply, to not over-shadow the work, but to make it happen I had to write code. That’s not the important part; the important part is that I’m up enough on HTML to know what code needed to be written.

Can someone please explain to me why a “traditional” art director can’t design and layout a website or why a “digital” art director can’t design and layout a print ad? Anyone? While you’re at it, I’d also like to know what, exactly, is a digital copywriter. And digital creative director. Why can’t a social media or interactive campaign come from the mind of a “traditional” creative? It can. And it should.

The best time to be in this business is right now. Though, I felt the same way 5 years ago and the 5 years before that. I’m a geek for advertising and thus a geek for technology. I’m excited by all of the tools and toys we get to play with every single day — and the promise of more to come. Today it might be smartphone app or smartly executed board on Pinterest. But tomorrow? All I know is that I’ll keep my eyes and ears wide open. And my pencil finely sharpened.  

Yes, I still use a pencil. And that probably puts me in the minority as well.