Reflections – Direct Mailer

We were asked to do two direct mailers for two different stakeholders these past few weeks in our PR pubs course, and I must say that I feel like I have done a lot.

The focus of this assignment was to use PhotoShop in order to make direct mailers but what I learned about this process was that a lot more goes into designing than actually opening up a new document in PS. In order to decide on stakeholders for OU recruitment we had to think of possibly opportunities that we had in our market. I chose bi-lingual high school students as my target stakeholder but there are endless possibilities when you start thinking of other people that you can target a message too.

After deciding on my stakeholder, I made a chart of attitudes and beliefs that my audience would be categorized in. Likewise, I decided on a secondary stakeholder that could influence my first stakeholders decisions. Again there are many opportunities that I could have taken in order to communicate my message to my first stakeholder, but I decided that focusing on foreign language teachers would be a great way to influence their decision.

After creating my two direct mailers I feel like I did a good job at tailoring a message that would have effect in changing their behaviors. Making sure that whomever received these mailers felt like their second language was important was imperative. I wish I would have came up with a different front design for each but I feel like the use of all the different languages was so powerful that I wanted both stakeholders to get it. I did however change the message for each one in order to highlight what each stakeholder needed to do. For the student I wanted them to look at enrolling, for the teacher I wanted them to inform their students that OU is a great option to continue their second language.

I feel like I am becoming more aware of the different possibilities that I am allowed to achieve using Photo Shop and Indesign. I must say that I enjoy using Indesign more that PS but that both programs have their pluses and minuses. I feel like PS allowed me more control over the entire design of the direct mailer. I could get in-depth with how I wanted shadows and textures on the fonts I used.

If I were to go back and think of what I could have done better, I would say that I would focus on making a new design for my teacher stakeholder. I did not want them to be so similar but I also did not come up with an idea that would be uniquely used for my second stakeholder. Overall, I feel like I did a good job but that I could have made a bigger impact with my second stakeholder.

If you click on the individual image they will become more clear.