Tag: pr

The Building of the Bullseye Banner; a Corporate Newsletter

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On October 31, 2023

In PR Design, Public Relations

Newsletters are a great way to reach stakeholders and internal audiences. Newsletters showcase events, news, promotions, and tidbits about the organization all throughout. Newsletters are valuable because they allow you to communicate directly with your stakeholders and add promotional aspects.

How Newsletters are an Important Tool in PR

Newsletters like I said prior are a fantastic way to connect with stakeholders while utilizing promotional aspects. Having all information and media assets in one place allows for efficient communication.

There are so many different types of newsletters that can work for you and your organization. Some of the various types are:

  • promotional newsletter
  • reporting newsletter
  • company newsletter
  • consumer newsletter
  • blog
  • curated newsletter
  • practical newsletter

A great example of newsletters is the ones that come in our mailboxes from an organization we interact with often, typically around holidays or big times for said organization.

How to Factor in Your Audiences

Choosing the appropriate newsletter is based on who your audience needs to be. For example, if we want to spread internal news throughout a company, we will utilize a company newsletter and distribute it among employees.

If we want to reach our customers to engage with our company or organization we may send out a promotional newsletter.

For stakeholders already involved with an organization, it is a goal to keep them informed and entertained by our organization, “You want your customers to feel part of your family. A newsletter can help existing customers feel respected and stay in the loop, while also bringing in new prospects,” said GreenFish Marketing. Therefore utilizing a consumer newsletter would be ideal to stay in contact with these target audiences.

Key Elements of a Successful Newsletter

Finding the right elements to incorporate into your newsletter is another important part for maximum effect.

Great platforms like Canva produce templates to help you find inspiration, I believe that InDesign has much more customizability than Canva and can provide a much cleaner layout.

One thing that I’ve learned over the course of my time practicing PR is that consistency is key to building rapport and reputation among your organization and audiences. Use familiar fonts associated with the brand, and factoring these all throughout your newsletter.

Next, it is important to find pictures and graphic elements that are associated with the brand.

For my newsletter, my client was the company: Target. Target’s main elements are bullseye logos, their mascot the dog; Bullseye, and the color palette of red and cream. I incorporated these elements all throughout my newsletter to stay authentic to the brand’s image.

My Corporate Newsletter for Target:

Another prominent element is that the layout of the newsletter has to be appealing to the reader’s eye. It is important to:

keep them engaged!

Engaging layouts are ones that have the copy or text, broken up throughout with pictures, design, and structure. We want to limit long, “boring”, stretches of copy that could make the reader lose interest.

The same goes for the color, images, and patterns. We want these factors to be harmonious and allow the reader to find the publication visually attractive.

Give the reader a reason to keep reading! Wether this be with interesting layouts, designs, quotes or colors.

Newsletter Layouts for Inspo!

Studying Social Media

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On October 17, 2023

In PR Design, Public Relations

Throughout my professional and academic career, I recognized how critical social media is in public relations. From news to entertainment, social media is a massive part of our lives now. PR professionals must use this tool to connect with audiences and promote our organization!

Having Social Media as a Tool in your PR Kit

You can use social media as a tool rather than just a platform in several ways. Many social media platforms have built-in analytic monitoring services, allowing organizations to track their engagement and impressions. This can be helpful to gauge how specific promotions and campaigns are working with your audience.

Social media also offers a two-way communication channel with your stakeholders and target audiences. Allowing for post feedback lets your audience feel connected to the brand or organization, keeping that relationship.

Creativity is a big part of social media that traditional news, press releases, and other forms of media do not offer. With social media, there are creative ways to connect to your audience. You can do this via polls, comments, taking on social media trends, and commenting on influencers’ posts.

Creating a Social Media Campaign for Mejuri

To polish my social media skills, I created a social media campaign for the brand I have worked with for the past couple of weeks, Mejuri. ( Check out my previous posts on Mejuri brand collateral for context!) For this campaign, I relied on consistency and adjusting the post to the platform. For example, this campaign was centered around the Mejuri anniversary sale and was an Instagram and Facebook post exclusive as that’s where our major audiences are.

Mejuri Anniversary Campaign: Instagram Post
Anniversary Sale: Facebook Post
Utilizing consistency in the Mejuri logo allows for brand recognition. Repeated promotion of “Shop our anniversary sale.”

I wanted to utilize these posts to be the main element of promotion. I followed through with Mejuris’ editorial picture feel and blended this into the anniversary campaign. Using high-contrast images and them becoming the catching eye point of the posts.

Facebook Cover
Twitter Header

I wanted a consistent header/cover for the Facebook and Twitter headers that would stay on these platforms for multiple campaigns and seasons. One element of Mejrui is their catchphrase, “fine jewelry for being your damn self.” I utilized light gray, cream and dark exposure images that match Mejuri’s clean and crisp tone.

When Creating Social Media Content, Keep in Mind…

Brand voice, culture and tone are key to staying connected with your pre-established audiences.

For Mejuri, aligning with their classy, editorial, and clean vibe was important. They have consistently used product images focusing on the “people” aspect. It is important to keep these elements. That way there is greater brand recognition, so it feels genuine to the audience.

Platforms for Social Media Campaigns

Platforms like Canva are user-friendly, free and expansive. Canva has several elements that you can add to your posts. Canva also offers templates that can provide a jumping-off point for your creations. Templates are great when you need to see examples and ideas to generate your own creativity and ideas.

There is also a new feature that can help in idea generation. Canva has an AI helper called “Magic Tool,” which allows you to input ideas and design elements.

Canva is a great accessible platform for social media creation and is easier than its predecessors, InDesign and Photoshop.

Canva offers many tutorials, and you can even utilize the AI helper to guide you through your designs.

Here are several more articles and resources on how social media can be one of the best tools in your PR Toolkit.

Can you Create Collateral?

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On September 19, 2023

In PR Design, Public Relations

fiverr.com: austismstudiox

Creating brand materials allows branding and exposure to be a daily part of operations in your company. Simple things like a company-branded envelope, letterhead, and business card make it easier to effortlessly promote your brand through natural interactions between you and your public!

What Is Collateral Material?

Brand or collateral materials are creative assets associated with your brand. Many of these brand materials will showcase your brand’s logo. These can include brochures, envelopes, letterheads, business cards, flyers, etc.

Jumping Off the Deep End

As mentioned in my previous post, finding inspiration and narrowing down the vibe for your organization is a vital part of creating collateral material for your business and should be your first stop when starting your design process.

Understanding your brand’s tone or mood allows you to translate it to your audience. This may seem easy at first. However, translating it to correspond with fonts, colors, and other design elements isn’t as straightforward as it may seem. Find fonts and color palettes that convey the key message that you want your audience to gather from your design.

I suggest utilizing mood boards and finding inspiration on platforms like Pinterest, and I Heart It. These platforms allow you to visualize the design by putting all of your essential elements in one area.

Justinmind, 2020: “Inspiring mood board examples.”

When creating the brand materials, I knew I wanted to go for a chic and simplistic vibe to my work. I wanted to represent Mejuri’s classic tone and showcase their contemporary take on familiar favorites. I thought utilizing colors and elements I saw repetitively in my inspiration boards and translating those into my design process would help me articulate these tones into my design.

Here are a few other pointers and guidelines I used to create brand materials!

Are We in Uniform?

Having uniformity in brand messaging across all channels, including collateral material, is essential for brand recognition. Ensuring your design will translate well across a business card, letterhead, and envelope is necessary when creating brand collateral material. Seeing a brand’s logo repetitively allows for faster brand recognition and a sense of cohesiveness.

Cohesive Designs

Having harmony within your design allows for the product to be aesthetically pleasing and easy on the viewer’s eyes. The goal is to stay consistent with all the content you implement into your brand.

Another example that is a factor of a cohesive design is the integration of the idea of scale and proportion. I’ve discussed these in depth in previous posts. However, to recall, scale and proportion are essential to design because different sizes can draw attention to specific elements. For example, having a design where the scaling of elements draws your eye around the whole page can display your message more effectively to your reader.

SweeneyCreations.com, “Benefits of Cohesive Branding”

Consistency in your Logos and Design

I decided that presenting the logo consistently throughout my messaging was essential for my design. I made the logo the biggest part of the design to draw the viewer’s eyes there. I repeated this logo throughout to once again improve brand recognition.

Consistency is all about showing up day in and day out with the same message, the same visuals, and the same tone of voice. It’s about being reliable and trustworthy, and showing your audience that you mean business.

BrennanBrand.com

Mejuri Branded Collateral Material

For my business card, letterhead, and envelope, I wanted to display a sense of elegance, simplicity and the idea of being a new version of the classic jewelry brands!

I achieved this by creating a simple logo and layout but still using concepts like the scale to draw the viewer’s eyes to the essential information: the logo, the company name, the company mission and Mejuris contact information.

I chose classic colors for my business card, letterhead and envelope: black, brown and white. This is due to Mejuri’s consistent element in their brand of neutrals being the primary colorway. As a brand, I wanted to showcase that Mejuri still provides comfort and reliability as classic brands. However, the blank spacing and boldness of the logo add a contemporary feel to the collateral materials.

Why I chose Public Relations

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On March 31, 2023

In Uncategorized

Choosing a major in college is probably one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I went through several majors as I took courses in high school, and I changed again during my first year. As a sophomore wrapping up their semester, I am confident In my major, Public Relations. So… how did I get here?

The first major I selected was Political Science. I am very passionate about politics and believe that they can change every person’s experience in this country. However, as I took a few courses, I realized, “wow, this is a lot of talk about the internal side of the government.” I quickly fell bored with discussing the processes by which the government does things. I had a different idea in my head of what I wanted to do: advocate!

Wanting to use my voice and advocate led me to Journalism. Journalism was a fun major; I worked for my university newspaper and took a writing class. I fell in love with writing and planning to strategically use my words for different outcomes. However, there was a catch: interviews. I hated conducting one on ones with people. Half of the time, people would cancel last minute, or I just felt that I liked to be the “big picture” person and create the interview goals, not do them!

This led me to where I am today, a public relations major. I wanted to use my strategic frame of thought but not have to dig for content. I loved writing and creating ideas that would later translate into public relations campaigns.

I would love to say that I arrived at this swift conclusion alone. However, I have to give credit where credit is due. My best friend is a senior at the University of Oklahoma, and she chose public relations as her interest. As I went to her for guidance is selecting a career path, she displayed her love for public relations and truly inspired me to take it on. Now a year later, I love it more and more every day.

Aliana Head (Public Relations Bestie) is on the left side.

Why Am I So Excited?

Honestly, utilizing social media (specifically TikTok) has given me the idea of an actual “day in the lives” of public relations specialists, and I couldn’t be more excited. I love interacting with brands as a consumer, and getting to interact with the public on account of a brand is even more exciting. I plan to showcase my drive, attention to detail, and creative communication style to excel in the field.

If you have any interest in the public relations field, do it! I have had a fantastic time educating myself about the area, and I hope always to stay learning.

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