Anatomy of a prize-winning ad

Stan Byers isn't much for lengthy planning meetings.

Hates them, in fact.

And he's not much for complicated ideas that can't be expressed in a quick sketch.

Rejects them, in fact.

And it works for Byers, vice president and creative director of Rose-Glenn Group in Reno.

The creative team led by Byers won 14 gold awards and 16 silver in the recent "ADDY" competition sponsored by the Advertising Association of Northern Nevada.

Byers, meanwhile, was recognized personally as "Advertising Person of the Year" to honor his contributions to the advertising industry and the community.

So how is a prize-winning ad created? Byers last week walked through his team's process, using as an example the ad pictured to the right an advertisement for Nevada State Bank that appeared in a college basketball program.

After gathering basic data the size of the ad, whether four-color printing would be available, the production deadlines Byers gathered the creative team at Rose-Glenn to talk briefly about the project.

He keeps these meetings to 15 minutes or less.

"I'm impatient with people just sitting around thinking," Byers said.

Instead, he believes in the power of his team's subconscious minds to work their way through the problem.

"If you have a problem, your subconscious wants out of the trap.

Your subconscious is working all the time."

Part of the problem presented to the subconscious minds of Rose-Glenn is to work quickly.

The next day after the initial 15- minute session, Byers regathered the creative team to find an idea for the ad.

(Along with Byers, the team includes Joe Cummings, an agency vice president who is director of interactive branding; Justin Couch, the senior art director; Jan Johnson, the agency's production manager; Serena Palmer, the traffic manager ; Ian Skinner, a production artist; Janice Baker, a graphic designer and Ahren Hertel, an illustrator.) The suggested ideas need to be simple enough to be sketched on a single sheet of paper.

That's keeping with Byers' dictum that good advertising always is simple and unfailingly keeps a single focus.

Often, the creative process begins with the ad's headline, and the group generally begins with an agreement to reject the obvious candidates.

"If it's obvious, it's not memorable," Byers said.

The Nevada State Bank ad is noteworthy, then, because the headline " Proud sponsors of Rebel Basketball" is fairly obvious.

The ad becomes memorable through the rest of the message the identification of the bank with ordinary folks who love sports and consider themselves to be sportsmen even when they toss paper into a wastebasket.

Typically, Byers said, at least a hundred ideas will be floated by the creative group.

"If there's a pile of tracing paper on the table, I know we're doing our job," he said.

The execution of a good ad is just as important, and Byers said artists

often push an idea to a new level.

With the Nevada State Bank ad, for instance, the decision of photographer Jeff Ross to establish the shot's focus on a ball of waste paper in the foreground rather than the fellow in the background creates an aesthetically pleasing design while also enticing readers into discovering the story in the ad.

Throughout the creative process, Byers said he always battles demands to place ever more material into an ad.

"Ever since we were little kids, we were taught that value is 'more' thing rather than a 'less' thing," he said.

But an ad that is packed with too much information, he said, won't be attractive, won't get noticed and won't be memorable.

So when does the Rose-Glenn creative group know it's time to stop fiddling with an ad? When the deadline arrives, of course, but the moment to stop often appears earlier.

"An ad is done," Byers said, "when it feels like a piece of fine art."