INNcredible

Below you will find one of the first ads I did at August, Lang & Husak. It was a tag-team effort between my copywriter "Adriana "So Fresh And So Clean" DiFranco" and myself. It was for a historic hotel out on the Eastern Shore of Maryland called The Historic Tidewater Inn. Lot's of birds, sailing, and antiques. The hotel was the biggest building in the town and had a lot of character to it. Everyone in the town and surround areas knew of it and had their own memories of the place. Leading up to the meeting where we were going to show the client concepts I was kinda stumped. I didn't have much a layout yet and I was still trying to wrestle the concept into place. Adriana and I had come up with some pretty solid headline directions, but nothing that stood out. As everyone was heading home for the day, I was getting a bit nervous. So I went for a walk and ended up in a local stationary and paper boutique. As I was browsing the shop a small card about knee level caught my eye. It had a Pen and Ink drawing of the Eiffel Tower on it and then it clicked. I thought to myself, "The Eiffel Tower is THE icon of France just as the Tidewater Inn is THE icon of Easton (the town it is located in)." And it could be applied to many different cities. NYC has the Statue of Liberty, Venice has the canals, Nappa Valley had the wines...etc. We could use these visual metaphors to sell the The Tidewater Inn. So I went back to work and played around for a little while. Ultimately what you see below is the end product. One of my favorite things about this ad is the tagline...INNcredible. One of my least favorite things about this ad is what it didn't become. Over the next couple of weeks we developed more ideas...and more taglines. But the client only had the budget for one ad. Well I hope you enjoy the work!