Tom Collins Makes Over Costa Rica tourism ad

When I develop a direct marketing print ad or a click-response brand/service ad I use an approach I call “maximum response per square inch.” It's not a scientific method, but rather a rough creative guideline.

What it means is that every element in the ad is a tradeoff. For every gain there's a corresponding loss. You want to make the illustration bigger? Fine, but then something's got to give. You have to make the copy shorter, or the type size smaller, or lessen the white space to make room for the graphic.

So maybe that larger image does a better job of grabbing passers-by and increases response. But the shortened copy may require cutting important sales points. And setting it in smaller type may diminish readership.

See what I mean? Somehow you've got to strike just the right balance to achieve maximum response.

Of course, all this is a bit of an oversimplification. Maybe the more powerful the illustration, the more it deserves dominant display. Maybe the more compelling the copy, the more it deserves not to be cut or set in smaller type. And so on.

This comes to mind every time I look at a travel destination or retirement region ad. Was the illustration so strong and expressive that it didn't matter that the small copy block was too brief or not very readable? Or could some of those square inches devoted to the picture have been reduced or reworked (or even eliminated!) to provide room to do a better job of telling the copy story?

Most destination/retirement ads rely heavily on a large quintessential photograph to tell most or all of the story — a single picture that captures the essence of the experience. David Ogilvy went to the other extreme with his famous all-copy ad headed “Surprising Amsterdam.” But my “maximum response per square inch” yardstick calls for at least some consideration of other possibilities.

In the case of travel ads, I've seen some featuring a full-page photo so compelling that it makes me want to go there and motivates me to click-respond and find out more.

Recently, for example, I saw a full-page ad for Arizona tourism featuring a large photo of a family of four hiking through Grand Canyon National Park. At the top, a small headline in “clever” but empty ad-man verbiage states the obvious: “Your adventure in the Grand Canyon taught you a lot — like it's not the hike that takes your breath away.” Plus four postage-stamp-size snapshots that don't add much. But the quintessential photo still makes it a strong maximum-response ad.

On the other hand, in the July 2002 issue I reworked an ad by the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau that was intended to broaden its appeal. The original ad showed a dreamy photo of a kid skipping through low tide. Superimposed was a headline, “Whoop-de-doo,” followed by poetic copy about San Diego from a kid's point of view.

I felt the photo didn't seem unique to San Diego but rather could've been taken at almost any beach anywhere. (Although I admit that the promise of “70 miles of beaches” did add to the appeal.

My makeover was headed “101 Ways to Have Fun in San Diego,” followed by pictures and captions of 12 of the city's attractions.

I received a thoughtful and in many ways valid rebuttal from a spokesman for the ad agency responsible. He pointed out that the ad was part of a series, that parents with small children were a prime target, that the main purpose was to strengthen the San Diego brand, and that business had measurably increased following the campaign.

Fair enough. The only remaining question is whether an A-B split test of my makeover would've produced more responses, and whether that in turn would've indicated more progress toward all the stated goals. We'll never know.

For this issue's makeover I thought it would be interesting to show how the impact of a dramatic photo could be retained while adding the value of copy specifics.

I found an ad for Costa Rica tourism with a photo of an admittedly spectacular waterfall. Superimposed on it is the headline: “A whole new world, just a few hours away from yours.” Down below, three small photos of Costa Rica attractions which are too small to matter, plus a logo and a sign-off.