Big brands have big budgets to dream up elaborate stunts or events to launch new products, but the majority of players need to impress on a much smaller scale.
A press kit (also referred to as a press pack or media kit) is a key weapon in your brand’s armoury. Done well it will make all the difference to a journalist looking for their next exciting feature, done badly it will likely finish up in the wastepaper basket!
SO…What’s the secret to a great press kit design?
The contents of your press kit should be led by your mission: beautiful photography and samples to launch a new product range, fact sheets and biographies following a management reshuffle or a simple press release to announce an exhibition.
But while many brands spend hours agonizing over what to say to the press in their kit, most overlook the ‘WOW’ factor – or the magic that captures the jaded journalist’s attention, and compels them to look deeper. An effective press kit should engage with journalists not only factually but also emotionally, resulting in longer-term bonds and recall.
Creating a memorable press kit for stand-out
People of the press are constantly busy and distracted; they receive bucket-loads of information every day; they need to work fast with the right level of information. But they also need to have their imaginations fired by something new, so the look of the kit needs to be eye-catching and memorable.
Who wouldn’t want to receive a shoebox containing a mini football stadium that made the sound of a cheering crowd when opened (Nike) or a heavy USB stick in the shape of a silver ingot (Tiffany)? Brands that create stand-out kits ensure that their launch or event spreads by word of mouth. Think of something that the journalist will want to shout about to colleagues in a busy editorial department.
Make sure your press kit is relevant
We’ve created some memorable press kit designs over the years that effectively combine clarity of information presentation with real wow factor, going on to achieve valuable press coverage.
While each press kit design is bespoke and unique in format, our primary goal is always the same: to get noticed and talked about. First impressions really do count, so putting the actual content aside, make sure that at first glance your press kit looks so inviting that it separates itself visually from the more standard formats and is presented so well that they are intrigued to see what’s inside.
Press kit examples
Lindt Creation: When you launch a food product, try appealing to food lovers’ different senses. To launch four new flavours for one of Lindt’s luxury lines, we produced a luxury press kit in the style of an indulgent box of chocolates – in sumptuous cocoa-brown velvet that not only shouted ‘eat me’ but begged to be touched. The bespoke concertina piece opened to reveal samples of the four new flavours, supported by an informational USB memory stick. Produced to support a launch event at the Dorchester Hotel in London, these luxurious press kits were gifted to the attending press.
We brought industrial design to the press office with our automobile inspired press kit to help launch a F1-themed PSP game. A matt black rubber slipcase was gloss foil-blocked with a masculine Bridgestone tyre tread, sliding away to reveal a highly polished gunmetal grey box containing a brochure, press disk and UMD demo. When you shut the box, it even made a satisfying ‘click’ for extra cachet. A real boy’s toy.
There is certainly no formula for the design style and format of an effective press kit. Our brief when asked to create the kit for PlayStation game Buzz Junior, was to design something that would not only convey the facts to journalists but would also be passed on as a cool gift to their children in order to promote the game to the people that matter most.
To add to the challenge the kit also needed to hold not only the usual demo and press disks but also four controllers needed for the demo. Our Buzz Junior ‘lunchbox’ was the perfect solution. Not only did the controllers fit snugly into one half, but we also had space to include more kid appeal in the form of Buzz themed stickers, colouring book, coloured pens and a fridge magnet. The stress banana we included for the benefit of the frazzled journalists!
Our solution went beyond the brief, with a press kit that not only ended up in the hands of the target audience, but also travelled to school with them and gave Buzz more coverage in the playground!
When we were commissioned to create a press kit to launch the PlayStation 2 console to the global media, there was no expense spared. Although a golden oldie in our portfolio, it still has pride of place as an example that achieved fantastic coverage.
Designed to imitate the console itself, it is exactly the same design and the same dimensions. With two drawers that open simultaneously using a newly patented mechanism, it housed press information, a brochure and game demos, much to the disappointment of the receiving media who were convinced enough to question on air how they plugged it in! A well reported success.
There are no limits to how elaborate (or expensive) you make your press kit, as just these few examples show. But one thing’s for certain: to reach journalists for just a few moments, you need to come up with a highly creative kit to convey your brand message.