October 29, 2007: "Crammed"

Author:
J. Agre

Concept:
We’ve always liked this issue because it it bears the magic 1776 date juxtaposed with the traditional image of King George III of England. So we definitely wanted the ad to communicate that ‘story’.

On the other hand, we figured that the coin itself, while gold, would not look especially dramatic or eye-catching in a black and white ad and so we felt the caption had to be edgier and/or more controversial than normal in order to get noticed.

Which is why we chose the word ‘crammed’. We thought it would be unexpected and would have a slight ‘nails on a blackboard’ quality sufficient to hook the reader.

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
"King George looks ticked off." was our first effort. And while we didn’t completely hate it, we did think it forced the reader to connect too many dots to figure it out. It is edgy though.