A Futile Tug of War
May 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Thomas L. Collins
When I showed this Kyocera ad to another person, the reaction I got was Looks fine to me. And indeed it is moderately acceptable by the standard of yesterday's ...

Site Slighted
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
It's a new print-ad world out there. It has been for 10 years now. But too many print advertisers still don't get it. They could be running what I now ...

What's the Message?
Mar 1, 2008 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
A big part of the pleasure of reading the latest New Yorker magazine each week has always been its great cartoons. And more often than not there's at ...

Poor Visibility
Feb 1, 2008 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
To start with: Mea culpa, sorta. In several recent makeovers, I dissected and redid an ad which I later discovered was one of a series of ads. The presumed ...

Another So-So Effort From Dell
Jan 1, 2008 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
Michael Dell of Dell Inc. (formerly Dell Computer) doesn't need my help. In the latest Forbes 400 list, he was rated the ninth-richest man in America. ...

Delta Ad Is Witty But Pointless
Nov 1, 2007 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
One of the most common errors I encounter in ads that seem to need makeovers is a reluctance to accept that the largest word in the ad is the headline ...

Artistry Trumps Clarity
Oct 1, 2007 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
I've said it before. It's time to say it again. Arise, ye oppressed copywriters of the world! Storm down the hallway to the art department! Hammer on the doors! Demand readable display of the copy you worked so hard on! Wait, I've got it wrong. That was yesterday. Big ad agencies don't have art departments to turn copy into ads anymore. ...

DHL Ad Doesn't Go Anywhere
Sep 1, 2007 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
Bill Bernbach, Rosser Reeves and David Ogilvy surely were the three greatest brand-advertising thinkers. And as most of my readers know by now, I consider David Ogilvy the greatest of them all. ...

It's ChicBut What's It About?
Aug 1, 2007 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
Quick! What's that illustration? Maybe one of those gruesome X-ray views of your intestines like you see in constipation-remedy mailers? Quick! What's ...

Great Product, Great Site. Who Knew?
Jul 1, 2007 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
So what's going on in this Dansko ad? Not much. Apparently just advertising for the sake of advertising. You undoubtedly know Dansko for their famously comfortable shoes. The ad assumes that you do know, and merely wants to provide an intriguing artistic reminder. ...

Art Wins Over Copy Again
Jun 1, 2007 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
I did a makeover of an IBM ad some four years ago in this space. That one featured an out-of-focus photo of a reindeer and a headline in white letters, “Finnair Sees It” (The Makeover Maven, Oct. 15, 2003). ...

Trying Too Hard
May 1, 2007 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
“Baseball is one of those activities in which the harder you try, the worse you do,” he wrote. “The more a pitcher aims the ball, the wilder he becomes. The more a batter tenses, the slower and more tentative his muscles become.” This ad for Keep a Child Alive wants to knock the ball out of the park but instead hits it foul. ...

Blender Ad Doesn't Quite Blend
Apr 1, 2007 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
Quick. If you were paging through a magazine and came across this Breville blender ad, what would your impression be in the first five or 10 seconds? ...

ETF Ad Weaves a Tangled Web
Mar 1, 2007 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
Anybody here remember a certain pseudo-inspirational poster of yesteryear? It read: They said it couldn't be done. So we didn't even try. I thought of ...

Half Empty or All Empty?
Feb 1, 2007 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
Are these people nuts? Do they have money to burn, and can't find any better way to get rid of it? Wait, wait. I'm forgetting my 2007 New Year's resolution ...

Yahoo! Strikes Out Again
Jan 1, 2007 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
Remember how it was in college? You were too busy partying in the dorm or frat house to fight your way through Dante's “Divine Comedy” and write an analysis of it for your term paper. Then the term paper was due. So what did you do? You sat down and cranked out several thousand words of baloney, to use a polite word for it, which hopefully concealed that you had barely read a line of Dante. ...

All Over the Place
Dec 1, 2006 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
Maven's Maxims: If you don't have a goal, you can't reach it. If you don't have a target, you can't hit it. This Emcor ad is a good example. First of all, it has a jumble of elements which don't invite walking through it easily from beginning to end. ...

Joe Torre Needs Help. So Does His Ad
Nov 1, 2006 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
IT'S ALWAYS A SHAME TO SEE A WORTHY NONPROFIT RUN A fundraising ad that just doesn't do the job. One can't help thinking that the ad money could have been better spent on the organization's programs. I found this ad for the Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation in a recent issue of BusinessWeek. ...

Do You Know About SIFE?
Oct 15, 2006 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
Once again it's time to play “Figure out the ad.” You do have time for that in your busy day, don't you? Whenever I see an ad headline like this one for an organization called SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise), I think of Robert Di Niro in the movie “Taxi Driver.” Are you talkin' to me? ...

Too Cool
Sep 1, 2006 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
At first I wasn't sure if this York air conditioner ad was weak enough to cry out for a makeover. After all, it does identify the product and mention a couple of sales points in the headline. It has nice pictures of the product, of happy people, and swatches showing the choice of colors. But the more I studied and worked with it, the more I found lacking. ...

Open for Business? Not Quite
Aug 1, 2006 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
I'm not greedy. I can live quite comfortably on a mere $5 million a year. So I would be very happy to have just 1% of the ad dollars that are largely wasted on ads like this one from American Express. It makes one think that such corporations must have summer interns they don't know what to do with. So they give them a job that requires no experience, training or common sense — namely, requesting and OK'ing the company's business-to-business advertising. ...

So Where's the Copy?
Jul 1, 2006 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
I admit, I have to search widely for interactive ads that cry out for a makeover. Still, there always seems to be a plentiful supply of examples of advertising folly. And while the percentage of such ads may be small, the dollar waste is huge. The latest example is one that I found in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal, an ad for the worldwide chain of Mandarin Oriental Hotels. It's presumably one of a series. ...

Anderson Ad Wooden Win Any Response Awards
Jun 15, 2006 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
ONE OF THE COMPOSITIONS IN A RECENT AVANT-GARDE MUSIC concert was a single long deconstructed chord lasting about 10 minutes. When it had been performed previously, it was reported that cries of “I confess! I confess!” had risen from members of the audience. But this time the composition received a standing ovation. How come? ...

Nice Story, But Illy's Ad Doesn't Tell It
May 1, 2006 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
Mark Twain said, “The difference between the right word and the almost-right is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” This ad for an Illy espresso coffee home-delivery program is more like the former than the latter. ...

Three Paths to Purification
Apr 1, 2006 12:00 PM, THOMAS L. COLLINS
Sometimes I am 99% certain that my makeovers will produce a better return on investment than the original ads. But not always. Occasionally what I have blocked out is merely a creative hypothesis that deserves to be tested. ...