Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 14, 1993 TAG: 9302120270
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ADDING IT ALL UP
ARRESTING television commercials are created through "a combination of talented people and aggressive advertisers."And that, added Glenn Petach, is why radio and television advertising lags in quality in Roanoke, as well as in many other markets outside the nation's major metro areas.
Petach, executive vice president for creative services for Carden & Cherry Advertising in Nashville, Tenn., was one of three judges of local talent for the Addy Awards, the Roanoke advertising industry's annual competition.
"Maybe people in this market do not do television all the time," said judge Elizabeth Henderson, senior copywriter for Austin Kelley Advertising in Atlanta.
That's true in similar markets all over the country, she added.
Clients of local advertising agencies have lower budgets that rule out producing and airing expensive radio and television commercials much of the time, Petach explained. Thus they are "not giving it much of a chance to excel."
The third judge, Warren Lewis, senior art director at Taylor Smith agency in Houston, called some of the local entries in the television category "overly ambitious."
Agencies that make television commercials should simplify the concept of the spot and concentrate on that aspect, Lewis said.
The judges said such simplification marked the television commercials which captured top spots in that category for the Roanoke Addy Awards.
One gold medal in local television went to a spot for Books, Strings & Things that was created in-house by the Blacksburg and Roanoke stores' president, Richard Walters.
The citation for second place in local television was won by Cable Rep Advertising for a commercial for The Comedy Club. Cable Rep is an arm of Cox Cable Roanoke.
Poindexter Associates captured a gold award for a regional TV spot it produced for Dominion Bankshares Corp.
The judges awarded only one Addy for a radio spot. It was won by the Jack Smith Agency for work on behalf of Mill Mountain Theatre.
Printed advertising was another matter, the judges said as they surveyed a table of the winning entries.
Best-in-show was a piece prepared by The Packett Group for Shenandoah Life Insurance Co. It was sent to businesses that were potential customers for policies on key executives.
The piece was simple and well-executed, Petach said.
The item, intended as a direct mail promotion, unfolds in panels with short statements about a woman's contributions to her company and community.
A final panel shows a newspaper clipping announcing the unexpected death of the fictitious 37-year-old executive and closes with a pitch for life insurance.
"It played on your emotions and smacked you right in the face," Petach said. "It really struck my emotions."
"Without a doubt, I think it was perfect," Lewis said of the piece.
The judges said local agencies do well on producing brochures, especially those in full color.
They also found many good entries in black-and-white advertising for newspaper publication.
Lewis said many posters created in Roanoke tended to look more like advertising because too much information was crowded in.
Posters, he said, should quickly convey a single idea.
Henderson said a poster is simple and "visually arresting." Petach called true posters "visually exciting . . . hopefully to strike an emotion."
Their gold medal for a good poster went to one promoting the Radford University Ballet's presentation of the Nutcracker. Designed by the university, it featured a picture, hand-painted in muted tones, of a sleeping child holding a wooden soldier.
Also high on their list were the huge eyes staring from a poster created as a public service by Ad 2 for the Voice of the Blue Ridge. That's an agency that reads material over the radio for blind listeners.
Petach said markets larger than Roanoke boast more good advertising just by the sheer amount of work produced. But there's no place, he said, where all of the advertising work is good.
Any advertising show, he said, displays "very intriguing, very good stuff - and less than wonderful stuff."
Henderson said that the strong pieces created by Roanoke ad agencies "would stand up well in any other market."
The best work in Roanoke, Lewis added, can compete on a national level.