Garden Club - Oregano Herb Self Mailer

Promotional self mailer used to encourage Garden Club of America members to grow their own herbs for use in cooking. At first glance it appears to be an invitation to a dinner party, but upon closer inspection, it reveals a tear off herb seed packet (with growing instructions), and a receipe card to use the herb with.

The Brief<

Create a promotional mailer that will be sent to existing Garden Club of America (GCA) members and encourage them to take the time to cultivate their own gardens. The mailer should meet US Postal regulations for bulk mailings to save on postage costs.

The Concept<

Everyone with a mailing address is quickly inundated with bulk "junk" mail. The vast majority of this mail is filtered out with a cursory glance and disposed off without ever being read. To improve the odds that the GCA member reads the mailer it will utilize variable data printing to disguise itself as a personalized invitation to a dinner party. Each mailing will entice the reader with a picture of the main dish and reveals the location of the party to be at the reader residential address.

Further marketing text explains the disguise and encourages the reader to utilize an attached seed packet to plant their herb garden. The tear off seed packet includes information about the featured herb with a description of flavor, common uses, planting instructions, plant preferences, and growing tips. The herb is featured in the creation of the main dish, displayed in the enticement picture, which reveals itself as a tear off recipe card.

The Solution<

To offset the added cost of variable data printing the mailer was designed to minimize other factors such as; print layout to minimize paper cost, self mailer format to negate envelope cost, and size format to minimize on bulk mail postage cost. The mailer design took into account how the reader must unfold it to maintain the disguise, transition the thought process to growing a herb garden, in multiple stages.