January 31, 2011: "Reflect Well on You"

Author:
J. Agre

Concept:
We decided to go for the tried and true ‘double-meaning’ caption this week, highlighting the fact that this extremely cool Gem+ PL Morgan has wildly reflective surfaces through the use of language which could also be interpreted to mean that buying this coin will make you look good (even if that is kind of a silly notion).

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
Our first iteration of this ad was the more concise "This Coin will Reflect Well on You.", but I was afraid that some of our readers would not get the all-important reflective surfaces part of the double-meaning. So I added the "Proof-Like" verbiage as seen in the final ad.

In retrospect, I am positive that was a mistake, since it watered-down the original concept making it more literal, less clever and simply not as good.

Which just goes to show you that it is much easier to come up with good captions a week later when there is no time pressure, as opposed to cranking them out minutes before the deadline.

Oh well.