A PR Idea I did...

Waleed_Alzuhair · #1 10-23-2005, 10:17 AM

Today is the 19th day of the Muslim's lunar month Ramadhan, the month of fasting.. Before the beginning of Ramadhan, I worked with a local ad agency to print the calendar for the month showing sunrise and sunset times of the day.

The purpose is to distribute them for PR and marketing purposes as our names and contacts were printed on them.

The calendar was printed as a 7x10cm card, with 8 different templates for the front of the card. The same moon phases with timing is printed on the back. We printed 8,000 cards for roughly $600 (the cost will split 2 ways, between me and the ad agency)

I hope you like it.. Click to see - 117KB

Chris_Shain · #2 10-25-2005, 11:49 PM

I really like how this forum can expose us all to the needs of different cultures, thankyou for sharing these Waleed. And despite where we live and work we all seem to have pretty common issues to deal with !!

I think the promo looks good - the idea is terrific, sharing the cost is also really good idea - the only warning I'd give is that make sure you use them, i.e. send them out, especially a time specific promo like this. The other thing I've noticed with successful photgs promos is that they tend to send another new set of cards in 3 months time as a followup.

I've done promo's not disimilar to this, and the enthusiasm and energy that actually gets the image on the page can be so consuming that the promo item then sits around for a while. but maybe I'm a lone procrastinator !

having said that - sometimes just getting this sort of stuff together seems to introduce more energy and new work seems to come in anyway !! ( I'm sure you know the old cliche about the journey being more important than the destination)

all the best and I hope it goes well for you.

Chris

DouglasUrner · #3 10-26-2005, 12:25 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I really like how this forum can expose us all to the needs of different cultures, thankyou for sharing these Waleed. And despite where we live and work we all seem to have pretty common issues to deal with !!

[/ QUOTE ]

Isn't that the truth. I love looking at the websites here -- even if it makes me feel completely inadequate, there is so much inspiration in the work others have done.

[ QUOTE ]
. . . The other thing I've noticed with successful photgs promos is that they tend to send another new set of cards in 3 months time as a followup.

[/ QUOTE ]

This matches the advice I've been given. If you've got a budget for outreach it will be much better spent to use it to reach a 1/3 or a 1/4 of your audience 2 or 3 times (figuring that economies of scale mean that you can't do it 3 or 4 times) than to hit your whole list only once. Of course if you can do the whole list multiple time, so much the better.

Thanks again to everybody for all of the sharing of ideas and experience on this list.

Doug

Waleed_Alzuhair · #4 10-26-2005, 05:16 AM

Thanks Chris & Doug...

The cards' distribution was split 3 ways:
- Personally, by the ad agency.
- Personally, by me.
- By express mail.

We were able to distribute all 8,000 cards (200 ribbon wrapped packages) within the first 3 days.

As far as enthusiasm and energy goes, getting printing quotes by the ad agency consumed a lot of it. Although I kept reminding them that between $550-$650 you don't have much to compare and focus should be on quality; The time wasted was costing us more. But hey, we cannot stop people from running the extra mile [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Edit: By the way, the ad agency wanted a more warm image to put on their website, so I gave them this.

DouglasUrner · #5 10-26-2005, 12:33 PM

[ QUOTE ]

We were able to distribute all 8,000 cards (200 ribbon wrapped packages) within the first 3 days.

As far as enthusiasm and energy goes, getting printing quotes by the ad agency consumed a lot of it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sounds like you did this just right, hopefully the money you spent on the project didn't feel like a lot and you and the agency can follow up in a couple of months with another project aimed at the same list (or a sensible subset of it).

In my experience a 2 to 3 percent response rate to direct mail is about what you can expect (depending on how well this list is targeted and how important you message is to them, of course). So don't fall into the trap of seeing a very small seeming response rate and thinking the idea failed. Follow up with something of similar quality to the same group, what to send will depend on who you're mailing to. If it was your client list, the follow-up soon with some excuse for checking in, show them new work in your portfolio, present an idea, anything to keep in touch while the memory of the cards is still there. If it was a blind list to a targeted group (or groups) of prospects, spend some time thinking of reasons to contact them again within a couple of months. Maybe there is a "season" that they will be preparing new material for, send the next promo while you think they are in the decision making cycle for that work, etc.

Great job!

Doug

Waleed_Alzuhair · #6 10-26-2005, 01:32 PM

Thanks Doug..

The distribution lists were shared between us, as we both distribute to our customers and we didn't have many common between us. That would be better marketing as we both got exposed to a new set of prospects. Follow up would be through PR phone calls and visits.

A couple of projects resulting from this campaign would definitely pay for its total cost.

The ad agency is proposing we do the 2006 calendar at this time and sell through a defined chain of bookstores, but I'm not too optimistic as we're already approaching November without any design concepts ready. I've already given them a few themes to think about, let's see how to evolves.

DouglasUrner · #7 10-26-2005, 02:03 PM

I think you may be right that it is too late for a calendar, especially one to be sold. But what about a downloadable calendar -- page of the month kind of thing? You could do the photographs, the agency could do the design and the calendars would be available for download as PDFs in time for the next month. You'd get some visibility, costs would be low, and by watching your web logs you'd get an idea of how popular it was -- you could even estimate how many "repeat users" you had.

Doug