By: JOe Nicholson Her smile Invites you. Coyly glancing from behind a newspaper she's reading, supermodel Christy Turlington says she wants you and your children to read a paper, too.
"I've always felt that intellect is the most attractive thing about a person," she says in text in an ad set to begin running in newspapers this month as part of the newspaper industry's literacy-by-reading-newspapers offensive. "That's why I'm grateful to my parents for helping my sisters and me develop our minds by reading to us and encouraging us to read. I urge you to read to your children and encourage them to read everything they can get their hands on."
The gorgeous model has enlisted in the second part of a literacy and marketing drive by the Newspaper Association of America, which is spending $14 million for the first two years of a planned three-year campaign that began last fall.
"Promoting literacy and readership is a message that has resonated deeply with the American public," declared NAA president and CEO John Sturm. "It is a message that is good for newspapers, good for the country, and most important of all, good for parents and their children."
Turlington's come-hither smile is expected to rotate in newspapers around the country. Other ads feature celebrities and ex-presidents: basketball superstar Grant Hill, Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway, rap musician LL Cool J and former first lady Barbara Bush. The first flight of the campaign included ads with ex-Presidents George Bush and Jimmy Carter; Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf; and TV DJ Tabitha Soren.
Some 800 NAA members have vowed to place two ads per week for a month beginning April 13. The New York Times did even better, publishing a separate section on the April 13 kick-off day filled only with the ads and comments by Gov. Pataki and New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. "One of the greatest joys in life is reading to your children," said Pataki; "Newspapers offer a door to new knowledge every day," said Giuliani. An NAA survey found readers remembered Barbara more than George Bush from the ads, said Sturm, who added it was "probably because she's had a long identification with the subjects of literacy and reading." Sturm, who was present when the Bushes were photographed last year, said "unfortunately" he missed Turlington's photo shoot.
Not surprisingly, the campaign centers on print but also uses spot TV, movie theaters, cable TV, online services and advertising trade publications. Nine cities are getting spot TV and in-cinema ads: Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. On cable, ads are going on E!, ESPN, ESPN 2, MTV, Sci-Fi, VH1, Turner Sports, USA, TBS, TNT, A&E, CNN, History and Discovery. And online ads are going on USA Today Online, C/Net, AOL, Yahoo!, Excite, Pathfinder and ESPN SportsZone. To reach Madison Avenue, ads are going in Advertising Age, AdWeek, BrandWeek, MediaWeek, and the Advertiser. The ad campaign was designed by New York's Della Femina/Jeary & Partners.
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?(copyright: Editor & Publisher April 18, 1998) [Caption]
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