Reflection

The last few weeks in PR Pubs have been spent designing direct mailers. Our assignment was to create 2 direct mailers for OU recruitment services. We thought of stakeholders we wanted to create mailers for and researched them so that we could effectively communicate with them.

When I was brainstorming stakeholders, I decided to go with ones I understood fairly well to begin with. My first stakeholder is juniors and seniors attending high school in North Texas. I thought this was a good stakeholder to pick because I was once a junior and senior high school student from North Texas. So I already understood what this stakeholder is looking for and what their questions and concerns are about. I also know that these are big stakeholders for OU because lets face it, OU likes money and out-of-state tuition is expensive. This is also a big stakeholder due to location and difficulty of competing schools. The only Texas school I would have gone to is UT (I know, I can’t believe I just said that) (Boomer Sooner) but I couldn’t get in considering I went to a small private school where everyone in the top 8% had ABOVE a 4.0.

So with all these things in mind, I began creating my direct mailer. I got off to a slow start to say the least. Photoshop was intimidating me and I was in a creative funk. I had good ideas in my head but was having difficulty executing them, which is why all I had until very recently was a red screen. I am one of those people that when I don’t know where to start, I just don’t start. Instead I should get at least some ideas on the screen and see how they look. I am going to work on that in the next weeks.

Finally, I sat down and gave myself plenty of time to brainstorm and play with some ideas. Once I gave myself some time, I really started working. Photoshop came back to me quicker than I thought which was helpful in completing my project. I forgot how fun Photoshop can be but also so frustrating. It allows you to create some really fun projects but there are so many tools and features to utilize that you know your project could always be improved. However, I am really happy with how my direct mailers turned out. I feel like I utilized some of Photoshop’s unique features and feel it really helped my mailers.

Posted below are my two mailers (front and back).