People have been talking about the death of newspapers and newspaper advertising for years. We never paid any attention to those pessimists, and we were particularly thrilled when Brian Tierney and Philadelphia Media Holdings hired us to prove the pundits wrong. In order to show that print advertising is as effective as ever, we created a provocative advertising campaign for the world's first carbon-neutral airline, Derrie-Air. This Quaker City Mercantile-fabricated airline charges passengers based on their weight in the interest of the
environment.

We ran 36 different ads in The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News during a one-day period that directed interested consumers to the Derrie-Air website. The site got 140,000 page views the first day alone, and interest didn't stop there. In just three days, we had a massive 209,907 page views on the Derrie-Air site. Derrie-Air ads on Philly.com drew a 1.63% click-through rate compared to the
national average of 0.5%. The campaign also received significant coverage in national news, newspapers and the blogosphere, and even sparked a lively media debate about potential solutions to rising fuel costs, carbon emissions, global warming and the struggling airline industry.

Who said print advertising was dead?