Indie Next List Preview, Ads and Underwriting, Cutting Out Coupons for St. Louis and Denver Newspapers While in College.

The June 2013 Indie Next List fliers are in and there are two books featured from authors coming to Boswell. The only problem? One of them, Ru Freeman for On Sal Mal Lane, is coming tonight! That said, we can still promote Jeannette Walls for her new novel, The Silver Star. As usual, we are putting special labels on our fliers to remind folks that Walls is coming. It also notes that 89.7 WUWM, Milwaukee Public Radio is co-sponsoring the event.

As long as we're talking about advertising, I've been working on several different projects this week. We updated our co-sponsoring calendar with Wisconsin Public Radio, and placed our ad next week for the Shepherd Express. Figuring out the titles was a bit heartbreaking, as we had so many great events to share. There are some events, however, that are hard to sell in a small face. If the author isn't a known quantity, or completely intriguing in one sentence, perhaps you need to try something else, like Nick's poster for Peter Heller's The Dog Stars. 

The folks at The AV Club/Onion came to us with an open slot, and while we are not regularly in the Milwaukee edition (or for that matter, the Columbus, Ohio edition), we had a lineup that was too good to pass up. As an aside, I learned that the print editions are in Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, Columbus, Providence, and Austin. Did you know that franchises are seemingly available?.

They look pretty similar, huh? Well, there's only so much one advertising director can do on limited time and budget. I tried not to overlap, but wound up featuring Jim Gaffigan's Dad is Fat in both ads. Did you know his wife is from Milwaukee? I'm not giving any secrets away here, but it sort of explains why he does his New Year's show at the Pabst annually. Speaking of which, you can buy tickets to the Pabst show now for either December 30 or 31. Books are being sold by our friends at Rainy Day Books, and they have a signed copy book offer as well, for folks who don't want the challenge of a free and open event. But me? I'm always up for a challenge.

This all reminds me of my last year in college, when I decided I wanted to work for an ad agency and started cutting out ads from all the leftover Sunday newspapers at the college library (the librarian would let me have them when the paper came in on microfilm).

I have been always obsessed with regional variations, and followed things like where exactly the Hellmans/Best Foods and Schylling/McCormick divide was, that there were parts of the country that still preferred catsup (I do not think anymore) and that coupon amounts were generally higher if there was a strong local competitor. There were also regional brands of pasta and potato chips that had been bought up by a national competitor instead of consolidating, much the way department store chains like the late May (and current Bon Ton) keep their regional nameplates. 

Back to Boswell. If you are television station or commercial radio station reading this, may I just say up front before you contact me that your market reach, while clearly amazing, is simply too broad for our customers? It's great that you thought of us and please say hi the next time you're shopping at Boswell.

That goes for the rest of you too!