Half of these are good ads

(The original title of this post was "Are some people not even trying in print anymore?", but I changed it, because I thought many of you out there might think I was dissing all four of these ads. When, in fact, I mean only to dis two of them.)

I like to read the New York Times Magazine on Sundays and one reason is because of the print ads. (That is, in addition to the magazine's wonderful art direction.)

There are some very good print ads there every week - and, it seems, just as many that make you wonder why they spent the money to buy the space. You know, if they're not going to do any better than they did with the creative.

I scanned four examples. I think two of them are good. Two were a waste of money. I'll leave it to you to decide which is which, but it ought to be evident. (There were a few really, really nice ones in there, but they were spreads and my scanner at home isn't big enough to handle them.)

What this makes me wonder is, if at some places, print is so far down the pole of Worthwhile Things that they don't really even try to do good work on it. I may not agree with that point of view - and actually, I don't - but if you feel that way, for God's sake, don't buy a full-page ad in the New York Times Magazine to show everybody.

If you're going to spend that kind of money, then for God's sake do something creative enough to attract attention and get your message across. Two of these ads make you work too hard to get the point - if there is one at all.

Then again, with applied creativity maybe they don't even need to be full page ads.

But that's just me and I happen to like print. And, as we all know, I'm an idiot.