Newspaper Gets a Case of Shingles

By: Jennifer Saba It can't be fun being a real estate ad salesperson for a newspaper in general right now ? especially in Florida. The housing downturn has been particularly harsh in the Sunshine state, pummeling newspaper revenue. McClatchy, which operates The Miami Herald, reported that year-to-date through September, revenue for its Florida region was down 22.6%.

But the Herald isn't yielding without a fight. Rather, the paper is thinking of new ways to entice real estate advertisers to part with their money. One of the paper's clients, for example, was looking for a way to break through to potential home buyers for its new development of Philippe Starck- designed condos in Miami. "They wanted something to help them launch the sale of the units," says Pat Royal, the Miami Herald's director of classified advertising. "We wanted to do something new and different."

Royal turned to the paper's "ad lab," a department that thinks up creative pitches for incremental revenue. Creative Director Bill Whiddon put together a presentation that included a shingled spadia, borrowing a form that was used for the paper's promotional piece (Miami saw the Orlando Sentinel run something similar).

While a single spadia is, by now, old hat, several spadias in one ad is definitely new: It consists of "three" ads, a two-column, a four-column and a six-column (full page). The "shingles" open to reveal a full-page color ad.

When the condo developer saw the piece, they jumped for it.

On Dec. 5, the shingled spadia will run on the front of the real estate section of the Miami Herald as part of a larger package that includes two other buys, including a couple of jewel-box ads. The shingled spadia coincides with the Art Basel Miami ? a show that brings a surge of national and International visitors.

"The whole schedule is incremental revenue. We believe in package pricing," explains Royal, who adds that the advertiser gave the paper a range for the budget: "We went for the high end."

The concept and creative impressed Mort Goldstrom, vice president of advertising at the Newspaper Association of America. "It's very different than what we are used to," he says about the format. And as these times continue to challenge, Goldstrom says to expect more out-of- the-ordinary (at least by newspaper standards) thinking.