A few years back I was retained to develop an ad campaign for a very large sports outlet (magazine, Web site), which was seeking to grow its fantasy football product. The hook they wanted to build around was tradition – they felt that emphasizing a more authentic, “smash-mouth” image would help them better compete against the high-tech gloss of their major competitor.

I developed several concepts. If you ask any ad pro they’ll tell that all too often, the client winds up liking anything and everything except the best option, and this was no exception. I think the one they ran with was certainly good, but the one they should have fallen in love with is now posted to the Portfolio page. Click here to see the mock-up.

(BTW, the design we presented to the client was better than this. Since the designer owns the IP on that, I developed the alternate visual you see here. Dammit, Jim, I’m a writer, not an artist.)