Charles Apple

A couple of weeks ago, we got all hot and bothered about Indiana Jones movie pages. We posted some examples. And we posted more. And even more.

But the tiny Victoria Advocate — a 33,000-daily in Victoria, Texas, midway between Houston, San Antonio and Corpus Christi — is going a step beyond the occasional page about a movie opening.

This summer, the Advocate is devoting nearly all of its weekly entertainment tabloid to blowing out the big blockbuster movie being released that day.

The results are a lot of fun. And they prove that you don’t have to be a huge paper to make a huge impression on a reader.

The Advocate calls its entertainment tab M3
because it contains “Music, movies and more.”
Here are four examples of the Advocate’s summer
blockbuster covers.
—

Ryan Huddle, the Advocate’s creative director for the past two-and-a-half years, agreed to answer some questions for us.

Q: These special editions of your weekly entertainment tab are really, really cool! How long have you been giving this kind of elaborate play to movies?

A: We started with the summer blockbusters last year. Our first issue was Spider-Man 3 on May 4th, 2007.

Q: Do you do this with other stuff, too? Or just movies?

A: In the past we have featured local bands, plays and artists. After the summer blockbusters are over we will go back to mainly featuring local bands and artists of the area.

Some of the material for the special sections is simply
very nice packaging of the kind of character biography
material you’d typically see in a Hollywood press kit.
—

Q: How many folks does it take to build one of these sections? Is more or fewer than it takes to build a regular, non-themed section?

A: It’s about the same amount of people as it takes to do the regular sections.

Typically, we have one main graphic designer working on the layout and look of the special sections and a backup designer working part-time on the regular features like the Oddities and the New Releases sections. Every week we try to have a different artist working on the sections to give them training in different aspects of the newspaper and programs.

We have one-and-a-half reporters that will hunt down or think up local angles to the movies or features we have for that week and two copy editors to get the issues ready for print.

The Advocate builds wrap-around covers
for those extra-special movies. Tickle the
thumbnail for a larger view.
—

Q: Are those pullout posters in the center doubletruck? Who’s designing these?

A: Normally, the doubletruck with be the blockbuster movie review. On the extra-special blockbusters, like Indiana Jones and Iron Man, we will have a wrap around cover on high-bright paper going around the entire section. The next wrap-around covers on high-bright paper will be Wall-E and The Dark Knight. The main designer assigned to the project will work on the cover and submit it for approval.

 

Six doubletruck spreads.
—

Q: Are you selling extra ad adjacencies with these sections? Or is this something you’re doing just for the buzz value?

A. We have sold additional advertising in the M3 sections and have heard a lot of buzz around the community following the release of this year’s movie sections, both from the regular readers and the advertisers. At the beginning of this year’s summer movie specials, we let the public know about the sections by rack and stacking them throughout the city in coffee shops, video stores, and the local college, and giving them away for free to whoever wanted one.

Q: Is this something your editor or publisher dreamed up? Or did you or your staff sell them in the idea?

A: The idea was spawned from casual conversations with editorial staff, including Shari Prenzler and Meredith Cash, and Melinda Rogers in Marketing. We discussed what the big movies would be for the summer of ’07 and identified three.

We started talking about the fact that it was a summer of three, and it just clicked that we had three giant movies that were all the third installments of the movies. Since we had just redesigned the Victoria Advocate entertainment into the M3, I thought it was a perfect fit to start the summer movie series the 2007’s big three.

I called a meeting with each of the department heads and told them the idea and how we could make these issues different then what you would see in the regular paper. After the first issue of Spider-Man came out, the response from the public was very positive. As a result, we did more issues for the ’07 movies.

This year, we have continued to improve on the design of the issues bringing more local stories, artwork and fun features to every issue.

Four pages built mostly with wire stories.
—

Q: The writing, headlines and design all have a very playful sense to them. Is this something your paper is very good at all the time? Or is this something that becomes more apparent when you have fun things like summer movies to play off of?

A: The Victoria Advocate is always trying to match our graphics with the story. We have some of the best people in the business right now working for us to achieve this.

The M3 looks very playful because we are trying to convey the feel of that emotion of the movie to the reader. Anytime you get a designer that has a passion for something, they tend to have more fun working on the project and you will get the desired effect you are looking to convey to the reader, especially younger readers.

Local content plays a role in the Advocate’s M3
blockbuster sections, too. In this example, reporter
Aprill Brandon — “Stilleto Girl” — spoke with two
area comic book experts to help decide the age-old
comic book question: Which character would kick
the other characters’ asses?

On this page, Brandon goes a step further and rates
several comic book heroes on their hotness factor.
In case you’re wondering, she writes:

There is no doubt. The Bat is a hottie. It’s what
I like to call the Jordan Catalano effect. Girls
are suckers for a good locker lean and a brooding
face. He’s gorgeous, but he has issues. Not to
mention, Batman has the coolest ride. Ever.

—

Q: You’re a relatively small paper. What advice would you give other under-50K papers on how to pull off something this cool and this fun?

A: Make sure you have the time and energy to work on something like this. Communicate with the other departments on what you what to accomplish with the section. On a project of this size, it is important to get everyone involved from editorial, advertising, marketing, distribution, and press. It will save you time in the long run.

The other advice I have is to have fun with the section, learn what works for your market and your readers, ask their advice and find out what they would like to see in the issues.

Q: What kind of feedback do you get from your readers? Do you get a sales bump? Do you get requests for copies that can be framed?

A: We have gotten calls from readers asking when the new M3 Movie edition is coming out. The public seems to love it and has really embraced the new look and feel of the section.

Records from last year showed the circulation numbers growing on Fridays for the rack copies. This year, it looks like the numbers are growing even higher then last year.

On the sales side, we have had advertisers request that their ads have the feel of the issue. For example, when we did the Sex And The City issue, we had advertisers request pink martinis in their ads.

We have had a few people come into the office and request additional copies of the covers or wraps for their kids.

I asked Ryan for a list of folks who worked on these pages. We definitely want to compliment the cooks, right?

Chris Cobler, Editor; Meredith Cash, Copy Editor; Shari Prenzler, Copy Editor; Aprill Brandon, Reporter; BJ Lewis, Reporter; Melinda Rogers, Marketing.

Creative Designers: Annie Hernandez, Jennifer Reckaway, Kendall Murphy, Kimberly Gohmert, Manuel Zamora, Mary Hancock, Nancy Bennett.

One more thing: I asked Ryan about the size of his department. He responded:

We currently have a design staff of 7 designers and are currently looking to expand our department.

Looking to expand. Hmmm. Apparently, not everyone is cutting back their visual staffing!

Get those resumés ready, folks!

Share on Facebook

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 5:50 am and is filed under Small papers, Innovative ideas, Illustration, Newspapers, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.