English 420Y - Business Writing Online

I am fairly happy with my group’s brochure although after doing the 5 minute brochure trash test I do see some more changes that need to be made to our brochure before the final draft is due next week. The 5 minute trash test really opened my eyes to a few aspects of brochures that I never really thought of before that we need to include. Through out the drafts we have made many revisions and it is getting closer to completion after these few more changes I don’t think it will go in the trash can.

Appeal To Emotions +
First off our brochure does appeal to our consumers or audiences emotions really well. We used Christmas colors, Red and Green which really get people in the Christmas spirit it is also the giving time of year. I also think that the pictures with the little children with Santa add to people wanting to give back to the community and volunteer. All of the pictures and colors that we used in our brochure make people more emotional to the situation.

Be Professioanl -
One thing that our brochure could improve is being professional. The program that we used made our brochure look too cheap and I wished we could have used a program like Adobe Photoshop to design our brochure. Also the pictures that were provided to us were low quality photos and it also cheapened the brochure. So our brochure received the first negative in the be professional category.

Be Personal +
I thought that our brochure had a lot of personal touches and connections to it and it let people see how they could be involved in the community and help this organization.

Achieve Readability +
Our brochure did get a positive for achieved readability but I think it still could be improved. This is something that we have been working on in every draft but I think we still are going to do some more improvement on it before the next draft.

Speak the Language +
Our brochure defiantly spoke the language of the audience it is very simple language and is not over powering at all.

Lead with Benefits -
Another category that our group needs to work on is leading with benefits. We need to add a section in our brochure that talks about the benefits the volunteers would receive.

Have a Single Message +
Our brochure does have a single message which is we need volunteers.

Focus on Products or Service +
It also has a focus on products or service which is volunteers needed.

Make an Action Call -
The last category that our brochure needs improvement on is we need to make a clear call to action in our brochure.

After taking the 5 minute brochure trash test I can see clearly what needs to be improved and our brochure received 6 positives and 3 negatives. Before the final draft I am going to make sure that we don’t have any negatives!