To test that the promotional material is effective, I will create a questionnaire that asks people (both the user and selected members of their target audience—see process plan below) questions about how effective they think the promotional material is, and what could be done to improve its effectiveness.
My promotional material will require the following information to be inputted:
- Company slogan, name and contact details
- Company history and aims
- What makes this hotel more attractive than others
- Images of the hotel
All this information can be ascertained from the company website. It will be downloaded onto the computer I am using or will be taken from existing offline versions of the website.
On leaflets and adverts (see list above) textual information will be outputted in columns (with AuroFill) and I will use frames to display images and tables—which will contain comparative, statistical and factual information about the hotel.
Process Plan
Repeat this process for each product:—
Software
I will use a desktop publishing package to produce the promotional material.
There are several different options:
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Adobe InDesign is an advanced DTP package that allows you to do everything. Adobe has supercharged this program with tables, transparency controls, long-document features, and output in both HTML and XML (a coding language for documents similar to HTML but far more flexible)…the new features make InDesign the top choice for producing four-color magazines, books, and corporate identity material as well as onscreen documents, such as PDF files, e-books, and Web pages… InDesign's typography tools are awesome. The program uses a special algorithm to ensure the most visually pleasing type we've ever seen, and InDesign lets you adjust and tweak the font, color, and special effects of both character and paragraph styles. However, costing over £1000, as well as its steep learning curve, mean it is not my preferred software choice.
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Quark Express quite like InDesign, is at the top-end of the desktop publishing scale, and so is very expensive and has a very steep learning curve.
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Microsoft Publisher 2000, although it does not have all the advanced features of Quark and InDesign. I do have access to it and it is very easy to use. It can produce some professional-looking material and has templates for business cards and compliment slips, unlike the other two. It is able to use AutoFill to distribute text over many frames. Its availability and ease of use make it my choice of software for this project.
Hardware
In terms of hardware, I will need a simple computer system with access to the Internet (so that I can download images and other information) that can run Microsoft Publisher, with a good quality colour printer, so that the promotional material can be printed to a good quality.
I will use the system I have access to, which is a networked RM Accelerator, with both a Hewlett Packard LaserJet printer attached (which could be use to print out rough copies of the software) and a good quality HP colour printer.
The hotel will need to make backups of all the templates (for letterheads and compliment slips) and other promotional material so it does not get lost or damaged on the system and so any unauthorised or unnecessary changes can be easily reversed. Any time material is edited to change relevant details, the backup should be updated. Promo material will be backed-up on a CD-RW disk—tape drives are too expensive and are not appropriate for this type and amount of data. However, security measures need to be put in place to ensure that no unauthorised editing of templates is made by those who use them. The templates will therefore have to be saved as such and password protected to prevent unauthorised editing of the templates. Promotional material which will not be used as templates will be stored on a computer which only authorised members of staff can access.
Review of Adobe InDesign 2.0 taken from CNET.com
