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Herald ad staff wins press awards

By Lynn Hotaling
Sylva Herald advertising staff members Herald photo by Rose Hooper

Sylva Herald advertising staff members (from left) Jan Extine, Margo Gray and Scott Denmon won a total of six awards recently in the N.C. Press Association's Best Ad contest. Awards were presented in Chapel Hill June 9. Advertising Manager Gray won two firsts and a third, Extine took one second and Denmon won a third. In addition, the three received a first place for a special Mother's Day page they designed together.

The Sylva Herald's advertising staff captured a total of six awards recently in the N.C. Press Association's Best Ad contest. Awards were presented June 9 in Chapel Hill.

Advertising Manager Margo Gray won three individual awards - two firsts and a third. She placed first in the Best Advertising Campaign for a series of advertisements she designed for the Jackson County Department of Public Health. Gray's other first-place came in the Best Full Color Retail Ad category, and the award-winning ad was created for Village Studio in Dillsboro. She also placed third in that category with an ad for Computer Dynamics of Sylva.

Gray and the other members of her department, Jan Extine and Scott Denmon, captured a first-place staff award for Best Spot Color Restaurant/Entertainment Ad for their color Mother's Day page. Denmon took third place in the category with an ad he created for Crossroads of Sylva.
Extine took a second place in the Best Spot Color Motor Vehicle Ad category. Her award recognized an ad she designed for Dunnahoe-Shaw Ford of Sylva.

The first-place award for the health department's campaign is especially meaningful, Gray said, because those ads focused on the dangers of secondhand smoke.

"I smoked for half my life," Gray said, "and now I believe strongly that people have the right to choose to breathe clean air - especially while they're eating."

Jimmi Buell, health promotions coordinator for the local health department, and Traci Clark, district project coordinator, worked with Gray on the ads, which were paid for by Project ASSIST, a state agency funded by the Centers for Disease Control.

The campaign featured six local restaurants - City Lights Cafe, J. Edwards, The Blue Squirrel, The Well House, Meriweather's and Subway - that feature smoke-free dining. The point of the ads, Buell said, was to give restaurants an incentive to go smoke-free. Ad staffer Denmon took the photographs used in the ads.

"We were trying to promote environmental change," Buell said. "A lot of restaurants would like to go smoke-free but are afraid they'll lose customers. We tried to show them with ads that it doesn't happen."

The ad campaign contributed to the decision of at least two other county restaurants to go smoke-free, Buell said.

Herald Publisher Jim Gray said he was pleased by the advertising department's strong showing in the statewide competition.

"These awards say a lot about the caliber of ad support our newspaper is able to offer its retail customers," he said.

"I think our local businesses really benefit from the expertise of award-winning advertising staff," the publisher said. "I'm really proud of the good job they do every week and happy they've received this recognition."

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