The Art of Self-Promotion
A self-promotional piece provides an organization with a great opportunity to engage prospective clients, introduce new services, or simply build brand awareness. Below are important considerations in developing a successful and memorable self-promotion piece.
PURPOSE
The first step of developing a self-promotional piece is to clearly define its purpose–the why. Are you promoting a product or service? Are you raising awareness among a specific audience? The purpose should be measurable and entice direct action.
CONCEPT
In design, concept is defined as a cognitive action that manifests itself in changing behavior. To achieve this action, your promotional piece needs to be memorable. To create a successful promotional piece, its concept strategy needs to be well thought-out to effectively persuade and produce a reaction in your target audience.
For example, in our self-promotion piece titled The Guide, the concept is to present Legacy79’s approach to storytelling with a spin-off on the gold mining process. This concept provided the perfect setting to explain the number 79, which represents the atomic number for the element gold.
DESIGN
Here is where the concept begins to take life, shape, and form. It’s also where insight and creative strategies merge. Effective promotional pieces plan for all variables–from message and design to execution. It is during this process where you need to begin exploring—in addition to typography, photography, and illustration style—the different materials and reproduction methods.
In the case of The Guide, we wanted to have a perfect-bounded book to resemble a journal; a gold miner’s journal. However, the amount of content for The Guide did not accommodate the minimum number of pages needed to have a perfect-bounded book. Having extensive expertise in printing, we were able to solve this issue by applying a French Fold. French Fold is a technique often used in printing that helps maximize space and gives the appearance there is more content than actually exists. When finally bounded, a French Fold is only printed on one side while the pages are joined together on the outward-facing edges, instead of the interior edges at the spine.
PRODUCTION
A well-planned process, clear vision, and expertise of different printing options are key to achieving a remarkable end result. The combination of an inspired concept, a methodical design approach and a well-planned execution– including the selection of paper stock, binding process, and finishing–is paramount to produce an effective piece that will evoke a strong reaction.
The best pieces are often done in collaboration. For The Guide, we also engaged directly with printers, paper reps, and binding companies to name a few.
PRESENTATION
After all the effort to bring this piece to life, the delivery and presentation provides the cherry on top. To maximize its impact, you need to provide an experience. Think about any Apple product–from an iPhone to an Apple Watch–the packaging is presented as an experience that elevates its content. It is that experience of discovering and physically anticipating what may be inside that creates excitement and a memorable moment.
Even in today’s digital world, self-promotional print pieces are highly effective when done right. They create a sensory experience unlike anything on screen.
Would you like to get a sample of The Guide and an opportunity to learn about Mining Brand Gold? Send an email to juan@legacy79.com and let’s start a conversation.
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