Think About It

The headline on the half-page ad in Wednesday’s Living section caught my attention.

“Do Your Hardwood Floors Look Like Deadwood?” it asked in big, bold type.

It just so happens that we have some less-than-stellar hardwood floors in our house. So I was curious what sort of flooring miracle this ad was hawking.

My eye headed straight for the proof – the image marked "After.” But all I saw was a black rectangle. That’s it. From edge to edge, just black, black, black.

I was puzzled. I looked at the “Before” image. It wasn’t much better, but if I used my imagination, I could sort of make out a hardwood floor marred by scratches and scuffs.

Using that picture for context, I gathered that the “After” picture was supposed to show a pristine, deep-colored floor with a terrific luster to it. I also gathered that this ad must have been designed in color, and had probably looked just swell that way.

But in the grayscale world of newsprint, that beautifully restored hardwood floor went totally dark. Indeed, the scratches and scuffs were gone, but the rest of the floor had gone with them!

The tragedy here is not that the folks at Floor Revive missed out on my measly $20. The tragedy is that they forked over big bucks for a half-page ad in a major daily newspaper and then didn’t bother to adjust the images for grayscale printing.

It’s easy – and cheap – to take an ad that you designed for one publication and send it as-is to another publication. So why spend the money to revisit an ad every time you plan to run it in a new place? The answer is as obvious as black and white.