February 7, 2011: "The Great Seal"

Author:
C. Sloan

Concept:
We’ve always liked Robert Scot’s classic Heraldic Eagle reverse, but especially when rendered in gold as on this choice, original early $10 with cool russet toning in the devices.

But it occurred to our guest author that some people may not know that this design is actually modeled after the Great Seal of the United States, a point of interest that seemed extremely well suited to a CRO ad (like this one, for example).

Captions that didn’t make the cut:
We knew we were going with this idea, but considered several alternatives, starting with the too-vanilla:

"This design is based on the Great Seal of the United States."

That did not seem at all engaging, though, so we switched this:

"Did you know that this design is based on the Great Seal of the United States?"

But those question captions seem just a little tired to us, and so we went with the ‘Fun Fact’ opening in the final ad.