November 4, 2013: "Fall Colors of Massachusetts"

Author:
J. Agre

Concept:
When I saw this gem Lexington Half for the first time at a show in Boston waaaay back in the fall of 2006, I was immediately taken by its lovely and unusual autumnal toning.

And I knew right then and there it would need to be featured in one of our ads – though I did not expect that it would be a looong 7 years later when it crossed my desk again just as the leaves outside the CRO offices were, coincidentally, at their absolute peak of fall color.

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
There were a number of variants of this same theme, including "Behold the spectacular fall colors of Massachusetts.", a perfectly acceptable caption rejected because we have already used that elitist-sounding "Behold . . ." opening too many times in past CRO ads.

So we instead tried the simple "Massachusetts’ fall colors.", which I personally liked if not for the awkward possessive form of Massachusetts. And since unfamiliar or unusual words and punctuation are generally to be avoided in printed captions, we avoided this one.

Which led us to the compromised solution in our final ad.