January 26, 2009: "Eye Appeal"

Author:
J. Agre

Concept:
Having no idea what to write, and facing a tight ad deadline, it suddenly occurred to me that the central ‘Eye’ motif on this coin would be perfect for a play on the phrase ‘Eye Appeal’. Our only concern was that the Eye on the coin might not be easily visible in our 1/4 page ad, and if it wasn’t, the ad caption would seem like an extremely boring, literal statement.

But we figured that if that was the downside, it was worth the risk.

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
Fearing that people wouldn’t see the tiny Eye or understand the caption, we found ourselves trying to explain it by adding more words.

First through the old standby "Eye appeal. Get it?", which we immediately realized was terrible. Anytime you have to ask someone if they get the joke, it’s probably not a real good joke. So we bagged that idea.

Next we went with the more sophisticated "Eye appeal. Literally.", but concluded that that was really the same thing.

So, after much internal debate, we decided that we’d go with the original caption, which had the added benefit of being extremely short and to the point. And those are usually the most effective ones.