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Infographic as Advertisement?

I had a chance to sit down for a brief conversation with Barry A. Martin, Principal at Toronto marketing communications firm, Hypenotic. One of Hypenotic’s long time clients is Fiesta Farms, Toronto’s largest independently owned grocery store.

Hypenotic and Fiesta Farms have a long relationship of working together because of their likeminded philosophies. Fiesta Farms doesn’t just see themselves as a place to get the lowest prices on paper towels, but the store is truly a place for local farmers and producers to connect with people who care about what they eat and where their food comes from.

Barry would describe Hypenotic as a company that creates “meaningful marketing”. When it came time to create a print ad for the back cover of Edible Toronto Magazine, Hypenotic created an infographic that seems to defy the logic of most ads. I wanted to find out more about his process and how he decided on this execution.

This ad is very different than most print ads that one usually sees. It’s full of information, rather than being brief and punchy. It’s essentially a tool. How did you come up with the concept?

The placement of the ad can’t be understated. Edible Toronto is a highly respected publication for food related issues, so it’s very much a niche audience. Fiesta Farms has close relationships with many of the writers in the magazine so we were looking to create an ad that was going to contribute to the community and not just broadcast the weekly special on bananas.

For us, marketing is not about the brand. It’s about providing information and content that members of a community of interest can use to celebrate a common passion. We came up with a way to help people create five different soups from a few basic ingredients.

Why an infographic?

Simply, there is no better way to quickly convey potentially complex data. We thought it would be a fun, quirky way to advertise for a grocery store.

Isn’t it too much information for an ad?

We’ve never been concerned with trying to convey too much data in our ads. For the people who read Edible Toronto, we knew that we would be trying to provide a service and to help them take part in something that we knew they were already interested in.

How was the process to gain approval from the client for this ad?

We’re fortunate to work with a client who is quite entrepreneurial and we have earned his trust over the years. Once we showed him the napkin sketch of what we had in mind and explained how it was on strategy, we were away to the races.

We contracted a colleague of ours, who is a chef in the community, to help us create the content. Our initial thought for the information architecture of the ad was a matrix or grid, but we wondered how we could make it more fun. Our graphic designer wondered if she could make it look like an ISO50 infographic. We emulated a trope that many graphic designers would recognize.

It took a little bit of tweaking to make sure that things could be easily read, but the hardest part was making sure that we included all of the little flourishes that we thought people might be looking for. Technique, stock, additions, root vegetable and flavour.

Was it difficult to work with the chef to have her eliminate the less essential information in order to make sure it fit within a format that would have been unique?

Working with an amazing recipe writer helped. She was aware of what we were trying to do and enjoyed the challenge of making the content really, really tight.

Final thoughts?

We’ve received a lot of good feedback about the ad. Unfortunately there aren’t too many people who take time to offer constructive feedback on ads they don’t like, but we’re happy with it. We’re looking to see how we might be able to make it an interactive tool for the Fiesta Farms website. That’s still in development.

Our overall strategy with Fiesta Farms is to not only help them be a participant in a variety of communities, but to be a leader. And we feel that by providing content such as this ad, it’s a good manifestation of that principle.

Barry Martin is the second youngest in a family of five siblings, so he learned the value of making a clear and compelling case early in life. Following a degree in Advertising Design from Syracuse, Barry ended up in Toronto, worked with a bunch of agencies on brands like 7Up and Hershey’s, but really wanted to work directly with people who had serious business itches that needed scratching. He founded Hypenotic in ’98 and has helped brands ranging from Tilley Endurables to Sympa­tico define and communicate the right message in the right medium since. @hypenoticbam

Daniel Rose is Principal at Omakase Group, a consulting and facilitation company which blends techniques from design, group process and visualization techniques to help its clients accelerate the creation of solutions to complex problems. Daniel is also the freshly minted community coordinator for VizThink Toronto. @danielrose

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