The Sun-Sentinel has been presented with 16 awards for creative excellence in the annual Mississippi Press Association Better Advertising Contest.
Among the honors were nine first-place plaques, including the coveted General Advertising Excellence award — the top honor in the newspaper’s audience class.
The Clarke County Tribune of Quitman placed second and The Wayne County News of Waynesboro third in overall ad excellence.
The awards, for advertising service provided to customers in 2022-2023, were announced Monday on the association’s YouTube channel.
The contest was judged last fall by newspaper professionals from the Arkansas Press Association.
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Sun-Sentinel Office Manager Krista McFerrin won 11 individual awards.
She captured first place in Division D in the category of Best Institutional Ad, a full-page design for the Gateway to the Delta Festival.
Krista’s Gateway creations also earned her two other first-place awards: Best Small Space Ad and Best Digital Ad, an online spot.
She received a first place award for Best Political Ad, a concept she developed for the reelection campaign of Tallahatchie County Sheriff Jimmy Fly. The ad featured the sheriff’s son as the pilot of an airplane and utilized the theme, “Let’s Keep Tallahatchie Fly.”
Krista received a first-place honor in the category of Best Classified Page or Section, for a series of classified page designs.
She was given the top award in the category of Best Theme Page, for The Sun-Sentinel’s Football Fever Contest.
Clay and Krista McFerrin were honored jointly with a first-place award for producing the Best Advertising Special Section, The Sun-Sentinel’s 2023 Back to School supplement.
Clay was lauded individually for the first-place Best House Ad, a promotional design he created for a newspaper Black Friday circulation sale.
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Krista McFerrin also won the following awards:
» Second place, Best Retail Ad, for a Square Drugs advertisement
» Second place, Best Institutional Ad, for a design she crafted for the Up in Smoke Food and Music Festival
» Second place, Best Digital Ad, for Pride Hyundai
» Third place, Best Digital Ad, for Square Drugs
» Honorable mention, for an ad she designed for the Chinese Kitchen
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Clay McFerrin also won the following award:
» Second place, Best House Ad, for a promotional headlined, “No matter where summer may take you, you can take us along,” touting The Sun-Sentinel’s downloadable app on the Apple App Store and Google Play
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Clay and Krista jointly won one additional award:
» Second place, Best Editorial Special Section, for The Sun-Sentinel’s 2022 Letters to Santa supplement
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Awards for reporting and editorial writing in 2023 will be revealed at the MPA’s summer convention in a few months.
