Print Mailer: Let Us Do The Heavy Lifting

by Amanda Friend

Here at Wonderful Machine, we’re ready to move mountains for creatives… or at least landscaping boulders. So for this month’s promo we brought out the big guns—err, I mean rocks—to show we’re always up for some heavy lifting. Printed by Modern Postcard and mailed out to 2985 creatives across the US and Canada, our September print mailer features an image from talented Detroit-based photographer, Roy Ritchie.

Roy was kind enough to fill us in on the background behind the shot:

The assignment was for Hour Detroit Magazine, for a feature about companies in Detroit that were selected as the “Best of Detroit” winners for various categories. This image was for “Best Garden Center.”

It wasn’t much of a visual place, just some rows of saplings and some flower flats. The concept that the art director and I came up with was to do something off-beat to make it a little more interesting.

Arriving at the location, I was stumped at what we could do until I saw the fake landscape boulders—then I knew that the owner should be carrying them. The first try was him holding a boulder in one hand and pushing a cart with the other, but it looked too awkward and it wasn’t obvious that he worked there. So I ended up making him hold the fake boulders in each arm to get the image to work.

Through the whole thing he kept asking “why do you want me to hold these?”

If you’re ready to take your marketing to the next level with print or email promos, reach out!