FEATURE

One Number, Right in the Middle of the Ad

$6.95, £14,650, 18 seconds, 9 days and 6 hours.

Sometimes you haven't read a single line of copy, and yet one number catches your eye and the whole message lands. The six ads gathered here all put a number right out front and build the entire idea around it. What we're focused on is simply how that number gets placed. The first half is about money. A $6.95 lighter, then a £14,650 Golf GTI. The third, $1.05, is what you get when you divide the donations a senator received from the NRA by the total number of students in that state — a figure Parkland students wrote on orange price tags and wore on their bodies. The second half moves beyond money. After the story of shifting -18°C, a temperature that had held for 100 years in refrigerated shipping containers, down to -15°C, comes 18 seconds, then 9 days and 6 hours. And in the last one, from Ruavieja, more than 700,000 people actually sat down and calculated how much time they had left.

6 articles