The Truth

I spent the day honing the details of a partnership promotion with The Truth for the celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Plain and Fancy. The Truth publishes the largest daily newspaper in Elkhart County. Our family businesses have advertised in their paper since the 1930s. Then they were setting type and sheet feeding paper through their presses. Both hands were tied behind our backs when it came to designing a display ad. We were limited to images impressed in cardboard from which they would make a lead plate. These images came from manufactures and advertising services. Now digitization, recycled paper, and soy ink (which is brown not black) are the standards of newspaper printing.

As most papers experience circulation decreases as electronic options for the news proliferate, The Truth has grown. Our relationship with The Truth has been the same for years: buy space by the column and inch, design and write an advertisement that you pray will resonate with your customers, and meet the deadline. Until today.

Krystal Dreier, our new account representative, is a new breed. She is creating opportunites for us to print 12 pages in full color, insert tabloids in the papers and rotating banners on etruth.com, stick post-it notes on the front page, sell ads for us and design them for the advertisers. We've seldom used the word flexibility when it comes to newspaper advertising, now we can. This morning 34,000 Truths were delivered by the "paper boys" and 25,000 etruths were delivered via the Web. Hats off to the Truth for changing with the times so gracefully.