Varied Names

The range of names for direct-mail items suggests the variety that is possible: circulars, folders, booklets, pamphlets, monographs, tracts, catalogs, packets, portfolios, bulletins, broadsheets, manifestos— not to mention pseudo-magazines, pseudo-newspapers, and pseudo-newsletters. Because so many of these terms are associated with the hoopla of marketing and promotion, public relations practitioners working for government departments, public utilities, and regulated industries often prefer to use the more dignified term "fact sheet" to identify any printed matter that provides background information about the organization and/or one of its projects. Some examples of fact sheets:

• The state government of South Dakota distributes a four-page brochure at meetings of senior citizens to describe a special phone service that enables the elderly to call the state capital on a no-charge 800 number for information about Social Security benefits, consumer fraud, homemaker services, taxes, Medi­care, and legal services. As shown in Exhibit 11.2, included with the brochure are a wallet card and a gummed sticker so that the number can be affixed to the telephone.

• Branches of the armed services issue fact sheets in convenient, three-hole-punched, looseleaf format, on such varied topics as "The Chaplain Service" and "Burial in a National Cemetery."

• The National Bureau of Standards issues regular bulletins on the progress of research and development on such projects as cardiac pacemaker batteries, natural gas pipelines, and resistivity stan­dards for silicon power devices.

• Federal and state health agencies, as well as hospitals, health-maintenance organizations, professional medical organizations, and insurance companies, offer printed material on every dis­ease, physical ailment, or mental problem imaginable.

Common Formats

The format you decide on depends upon the needs of the occasion, the creativity of the PR department, and, of course, the size of the budget.

Because the standard "legal-size" mailing envelope is approxi­mately 41/4 by 9 1/2 inches and the most common precut sheet size used in duplicating and quick-print processes is 8 1/2 by 11 inches, it is not surprising that the most popular mailer is what printers call a "two­fold folder" consisting of six panels, each 3 3/8 inches wide and 8 1/2 inches high. When a standard printing press and the standard 23-by-45-inch paper stock are used, a printer can neatly fit ten such brochures per sheet with a minimal loss of paper through trimming.

A common variation is the four-panel, single-fold brochure. An­other configuration favored by the travel business is the 8.5-by-22-inch sheet, which appears to be the standard six-panel format until it is fully opened to reveal a "poster-sized" inside spread. Still another option is the two-fold, six-panel folder with one of the end panels "trimmed to as little as 1.5 inches so that it forms a "teaser" flap that partly overlaps another page. Price information or copy that intrigues the readers enough so that they will continue reading inside, might be placed on this small surface.

Typically, the right-hand panel on one side of the 8.5-by-ll sheet is designed as the cover. The left-hand panel on the same side of the sheet folds around to become the second panel seen by the reader after open­ing the cover. The middle panel of the same side of the sheet thus be­comes the "back" side. Because it occupies the least advantageous position, it may be used for supplementary information. Or it may be left blank, except for a return-address section, so that the brochure can be mailed without an envelope.

The three panels on the reverse side of the sheet read in one of three ways:

• As a single "poster" spread.

• As a left-hand single page seen first in conjunction with the in­side cover flap, then in conjunction with a two-panel spread at center-right.

• As three separate and individual panels reading left to right.

The decision, of course, depends on the amount of information, the personality of the design, and whether or not you want the information to be presented in a linear or random fashion.

When the object is to keep the cost down to between five and fif­teen cents per brochure, and to present the reader with a familiar arti­fact, the formats above work best.

If you wish to intrigue the reader or achieve a lavish feeling with your message, you may decide to work with a printer to develop a non-standard format. A particularly intriguing, if expensive, format is the standard two-fold brochure with an extra flap glued on the right-hand inside panel to form a pocket that holds a sheaf of single sheets in varied heights and colors.

The single-sheet, unfolded broadside is preferable for meeting an­nouncements, grand openings, sale promotions, and handbills to be passed out at rallies. The uncomplicated format suggests a certain di­rectness, urgency, and lack of pretense. Conversely, any multi-page for­mat that is glued, stitched, or stapled at the back becomes a booklet and has a sense of permanency. Having attracted an audience to a meeting with handbills, you might then put a durable pamphlet into their hands for more careful consideration.

Arranging information for multi-panel presentation creates many de­sign situations that don't occur when you're dealing with the single rectangle of the poster or advertisement. If the brochure is to be dis­seminated from a rack or holder where it shares space with similar messages, the front cover must be arranged with the title or "teaser" on the top third of the front panel—just as magazine cover designers have to put intriguing information at the top, where it can be seen peeking out over its competitors for attention. While the cover should be unique in some respect, the designer cannot forget that it must be related stylistically to the remaining panels through consistent use of a related type and art materials.

Organizing the text presents another challenge. Essentially, you write the copy to make a complete message in linear form, as for a news release or a feature article. Then it must be divided into suitable segments for each panel. Key sentences should be highlighted by plac­ing them in display type instead of regular text. Care must be taken to keep the presentation balanced, with approximately the same number of titles or headlines on each panel, or a multi-panel over-line holding the text together.

Selecting the Art

Depending on how many appeals or how many examples you want to provide in one publication, you may decide to use several small pieces of art—line drawings or photos—or you may feel that the impact of a single picture will carry the entire message. For a leaflet decrying the fact that many unwanted pets must be put to death each year because nobody will adopt them, the startling statistic ("One out of three cats in Ourtown will be 'put to sleep' this year") might be most effective if re­versed (light lettering over dark image) and placed right over the pic­ture of a cute, furry little kitten.

Will you need to include a coupon, so that the reader can request more information or mail in a contribution? Ideally, it should be on a separate slip of paper so that the main message will not be mutilated once the coupon is removed. Make sure that the type, the art, and the slogan of the main brochure are echoed on the insert. That way they will relate stylistically when they are together, but each also can stand alone. If the budget dictates that the coupon must be torn from the brochure, put it on the flap farthest from the cover, and make sure no important information is removed from the main message when the coupon is torn out.

Some Do's and Don'ts

There may always be good reasons for ignoring accepted rules and practices of design. Nonetheless, the following advice can spare you considerable trial and error:

• Resist the temptation to design an entire brochure so that it reads sideways—that is, so that the 8.5-inch measure is the width and the pages are flipped from the bottom. The format is useful when you must present statistical information in tables that are wide because there are many columns of figures. But, ordinarily, it is perceived as "odd" and rather annoying. Never mix horizontal and vertical makeup if you want the reader to get all the way through the multipanel layout.

• Don't tilt the main title on the cover panel ninety degrees, un­less it is one or two simple and easy-to-recognize words such as "We need you" or "Go Navy!" A complex title such as "Ten Rea­sons Why You Must Support Land Reform" should be run in or­thodox fashion. At most, tip it at a thirty-degree angle if a bit of excitement is desired.

• The information on the cover should either intrigue the reader or clearly label the topic of the contents. The development of the concept begins through the text that is inside. Usually, the cover is most effective if it is approximately one-third type and two-thirds illustration or visual relief (white space). Sometimes, of course, impact is achieved by totally filling the cover space with super-sized type that boldly confronts the reader: "The five min­utes you spend reading this pamphlet could save your life!"

• Some element on each and every panel should "pull" the reader on from the previous panel: an illustration, a headline, a boxed item, a statistical table, or a variation in the layout. Reading an all-text message is hard work; the reader needs incentive.

• Strive for equilibrium. A brochure should not be top-heavy, bottom-heavy, right- or left-heavy, front-loaded, or crammed at the back. If your only copy adds up to the equivalent of three pages of text, use white space and wider margins in order to spread it out evenly. Avoid the device of dumping a gratuitous piece of art in at the end in order to fill.

• Is this one of a "family" of messages from your organization? If so, don't forget to use devices that will make the family resem­blance obvious: the organization's logo and slogan, distinctive color or border devices, and familiar typefaces.

• Liven the presentation with separate boxed or bordered items such as maps, directions, "how-to" explanations, and lists. A brochure is supposed to have a longer lifetime than other mes­sages. Nothing assures longevity more than the inclusion of vi­tal information that the recipients realize they may need to use at a later date.

• The question-and-answer format never seems to outlive its use­fulness. It is just about the simplest and most recognizable way to draw the reader in to the material. It is especially effective when the Q. lines appear in larger or bolder type. Questions should be written in an intriguing, punchy style, with a "What if?" or "How come?" aspect that the reader absolutely must re­solve before going on. The Q&A format may fall flat, however, when the questions are loaded or petty. ("Why don't the con­servatives care about the little man?")

• If you can afford to spend a bit more, spot color will dress up .a brochure—unless you splotch it around with wild abandon. Try using a dark-blue ink throughout for instance; render .a title in red for emphasis; or obtain a shading effect by having the printer back one entire panel with a halftone screen to give the brochure extra snap. Restraint and good taste arc usually preferable to gratuitous excitement, however. When in doubt, have your printer show you examples of work done in the past. If it has a quality look, you might want to try colored paper stock or spot color on some of your text.

The management consultant Howard Upton warns that three common mistakes can negate the value of a costly brochure:

• Built-in obsolescence. If information in a brochure is too specific, such as listing all your officers or managers or customers, it may be obsolete soon after your order of five thousand copies is delivered. The remedy: design the brochure so that it can be revised easily from time to time without redoing the whole thing.

• Ostentation. Turning the brochure into a tribute to your orga­nization's leader and leading off with a letter or extended quote allegedly from the leader's mouth or typewriter can sink the brochure in a sea of pomposity.

• Awkward format. Designers love to play around with odd di­mensions and strange folds. That may give "visual impact," but it also can necessitate special envelopes for mailing the brochure. And the odd brochure is less likely to be filed and saved.

Printer

Since almost every PR practitioner must design print messages, a work­ing acquaintance with typography and printing is helpful.

It is a waste of both your time and the printer's if you have not suf­ficiently thought out what it is you want printed. It helps greatly if you have in hand rough layouts or samples of jobs similar to what you are looking for. On the other hand, the worst approach you can take, unless you have an unlimited budget, is to come to a printer with the job so firmly worked out in your mind that you are totally inflexible. Printers will accommodate you, but it may mean jobbing out parts of the project that they can't handle, and you will pay a premium price.

Contact three or four printers far in advance of the time when the work must be done, and obtain samples of their work. You may find one printer who is already doing jobs similar to what you want, which translates into cost savings. Find out what typesetting and other ser­vices each printer handles in the shop and what has to be sent to an outside supplier. Time is lost and the price increases every time some­thing must be sent outside. The printer may not want to divulge this information, but if you obtain two or three competitive bids, it will show up in disparities between fairly standard items such as typeset­ting and binding.

Be sure to let the printer know if it's a one-shot job or whether you will bring similar work periodically. You may get a better price on re­turn business, especially if the printer can save certain graphic materi­als you intend to reuse.

The printer will need a day or two to work up the bid. Estimating is a fairly exact business, taking into account the normal office and plant overhead that must be apportioned among all the jobs, plus hourly costs of running each piece of machinery involved in your job. It is always useful to ask for a "break-down bid," which indicates how the price differs depending upon the grade of paper, the type of ink, the number of pictures, the multiples of thousands of copies, and the use of spot color. If you have a limited budget, you may have to play off one item against another: Take a better grade of paper and sacrifice the second color of ink, for example.

Write a Careful Contract

Before signing the printer's contract, check three important areas:

1. How much time will it take from the day you deliver all the copy until you receive the printer's proofs' I How long will you have to correct and return the proofs? Make sure you will have an opportunity to make a final check of the corrected material before it goes to press. To guarantee that you and I the printer understand what you expect in terms of turnaround time work out a production schedule that shows how many days each of you has for each step in the typesetting, layout, and checking process.

2. How much material can you correct or change without paying extra? Some printers allow up to 10 percent without penalty Others charge for everything. You should be able to make "normal" corrections, plus a few changes of headlines that don't please you, without paying extra.

3. Where is the job to be delivered? If the contract doesn't specify , then the probable answer is the end of the printer's loading dock. If your publication is to be mailed, you may wish to contract with a printer who has the capability of preparing material for postal delivery and mailing it, thus saving you the bother.

Learn the Basics

You'll be able to work much more closely and effectively with your printer if you learn the basics of typography and printing by taking a graphics course while you are in college. You can teach yourself the basic nomenclature using the additional readings at the end of this chapter. You'll want to have a working knowledge of printing methods, art­work reproduction, typesetting, and type characteristics.

Printing Methods Offset, the predominant method used today, gives a flat, even image, and reproduction of art is inexpensive. Letterpress, which some specialized printers still provide, gives a sharper, glossier look. Gravure is used for large jobs where high-quality reproduction of color photographs is important.

Artwork Reproduction Line drawings, which have no intermediate tones of gray, can be reproduced quickly and cheaply in photo offset, and they can be put directly on the final layout. However, continuous-tone art, including photographs, must be made into a halftone screen, so that the image is created by a pattern of dots that will ink properly.

Typesetting Some special display types are still set mechanically or even by hand. But most text and display type today is handled through an electronic process called phototypesetting. The material is typed into a computer, which takes care of all spacing and word division, and the finished type comes out of a printer on strips of paper, ready to be pasted directly onto the layout sheet.

Type Characteristics Every typeface has special characteristics: plain, fancy, bold, light, italic (slanted), or Roman (straight up and down). Each has a "personality" as well: masculine, feminine, humorous, serious, pompous, dignified. And most types belong to a "family" that includes bold, bolder, boldest, light, lighter, lightest, italic, and Roman variations on the same basic design.

Preparing to Speak

Speaking and speechmaking are as fundamental to public relations as writing. Reaching mass audiences often means using written messages, but reaching targeted publics often means speaking to them. Mass audi­ences must be spoken to through the electronic media, but targeted publics often must be spoken to directly at meetings, rallies, banquets, and even impromptu settings in the workplace.

The same person who supervises the preparation of news releases and broadcast messages is likely, at any given time, to be working on one or more of the following non-media tasks:

• Preparing the head of a department to brief the press on a new program.

• Writing a "stock speech" for delivery to any visiting group be­fore beginning a plant tour.

• Rehearsing the president of the firm for an appearance before the Chamber of Commerce.

• Setting up a speaker's bureau to provide presentations on non-­technical topics of interest to community, professional, and ed­ucational groups.

• Drafting the question format for interviewing employees' chil­dren who are candidates for company scholarships.

• Making arrangements for a dialogue session that will bring company officials together with community members to dis­cuss problems of pollution and waste disposal.

All of these events have one thing in common: Someone will have to be prepared to speak on behalf of the organization.

It is useful to understand the ways in which speaking differs from other communication skills, and the ways in which it is similar. First, two important differences:

• While a written message such as a newsletter, brochure, or ad­vertisement is somewhat impersonal, the spoken word carries the credibility of the speaker. Enthusiasm, concern, tolerance, understanding, and empathy are all best demonstrated through the verbal and nonverbal act of meeting an audience in person.

• The speaking situation is flexible and can be altered to fit the response of the audience. With the print or audiovisual message, you fire your shot and hope it hits the target. In a speaking situa­tion, you can make mid-course corrections.

But, in some very important ways, the speech is similar to other public relations messages:

• It must be consistent with other messages disseminated by the organization. The speaker must be familiar with positions taken in written communication, and must strive to articulate them in a personal style that is consistent with the view of the organization.

• Careful and complete preparation is necessary in order to avoid embarrassment. The speaker must have all the facts straight. He or she cannot hope to merely "wing it" on personal charm alone.

• The speaking situation poses the usual "packaging and deliv­ery" questions for the public relations department: Is this the best forum for reaching the target audience? Will it help us to achieve our goals? Is it the best use of resources? Should it be re­inforced with other channels of communication? Will we be able to measure the effect?

Which Programs?

Speeches and interpersonal communication skills have a place in all of the programs aimed at specific publics, especially when the programs have the two-way symmetric model of public relations as a framework. Some examples:

• You and your managers prepare to meet personally with the press and hold press conferences—essential to symmetric me­dia relations.

• Members of your organization give speeches to community groups. They also have face-to-face interviews and dialogue ses­sions with community leaders and other citizens.

• You speak at tours and open houses, help dedicate community facilities, visit school classes, and put on events for scouts and other youth groups.

• Public relations practitioners and managers meet directly with members of activist publics, trying to negotiate compromise so­lutions to conflicts with consequences for the organization.

• Government relations specialists meet with officials and mem­bers of key constituencies to present their organization's posi­tions on policy issues. They also give numerous speeches to civic, professional, and political groups.

• Specialists in educational relations and economic education set up speeches and small group sessions to facilitate interaction between students and organizational representatives.

• Financial PR specialists talk with stockbrokers and give speeches to members of the financial community. They also plan the exten­sive spoken communication that takes place at the annual stock­holders' meeting.

• The fund raiser finds that personal contacts, speeches to alumni and supportive publics, and telephone calls are essential for raising money.

The chief executive officer tells the secretary, "I'm speaking to the Management Club March 14 on the future of business-labor relations in Britain. Have Bob prepare a speech for me by next week." The secre­tary dutifully calls the vice president for public affairs, who passes the job to the public relations manager, who assigns the task to a second-stringer in his department, who fails in her attempts to get an appoint­ment with the CEO. Laboriously and without direction, she comes up with something she hopes is satisfactory. When the CEO finally gets around to reading the speech, he reworks it and gives it to the secretary to type half a day before he delivers it.

The speech, needless to say, is colorless and completely forgettable. Says Pope: "The writing-by-committee has mangled the best parts of the speech. What's more, unrehearsed, it comes across flat and lifeless."

The moral of the story is that:

1. Adequate planning must precede speechmaking.

2. Writing and reviewing it are important group tasks.

3. The speechwriter must have access to the speaker.

4. Presentation of the speech should be rehearsed to assure that it will have the desired impact.

Let's look at the many facets of the job in greater detail.