January 5, 2009: "Even Higher"

Author:
J. Agre

Concept:
The first ad of 2009 is a particularly important one for us, as it appears in what CW calls the ‘FUN Show Issue’. Which means it is the edition that will be distributed (not surprisingly) at the FUN Show, and which a gazillion visitors (plus all the regular subscribers) will pore through looking for cool coins and info.

So we wanted to do something really impactful featuring an incredibly cool coin, kind of like we did with our MS64 Bar Copper ad in last year’s FUN issue (and which generated an extra-deluxe reaction).

And since we just happened to have an even finer Bar Copper in hand at this time(!), we decided it would be cool to pay homage to last year’s ad, but this time in an XL full-page version featuring the mega-MS66 coin and a caption which ‘one-upped’ ourselves.

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
We actually found this seemingly simple caption quite challenging, as we got hung up on whether to use ‘In 2009, we’re setting the Bar even higher’, or ‘In 2009, we’re raising the Bar even higher’.

They may sound about the same, but we kept thinking of all the (possibly imaginary) negative connotations of the word raising (raising prices, raising grades, etc.) and decided ‘setting’ was the way to go.