VDP was used to produce a three-part personalized mailing series for the holidays.

It’s called Variable Data Printing, or VDP, and it’s one of the most powerful tools in the world of personalized marketing. Some call it “marketing to an audience of one,” and for good reason. With VDP technology, you can tailor the words and pictures in your brochure, newsletter or advertisement to each individual on your mailing list. The possibilities are endless, as long as you’ve got a database with the right information. To learn more about using VDP for your marketing needs, download our data sheet.

For this particular series, Harper House decided on a holiday theme, beginning with Halloween, including Thanksgiving, and culminating with Christmas. A consistent theme was chosen to span all three mailings, which featured the recipient’s name spelled out in candy corn, cranberries and gumdrops, respectively. A personalized message appeared on the back of the 9” x 6” card, which was mailed in a clear envelope to existing customers, partners and friends.

The photography was done at the Harper House Photo Studio on a Sinar 43 digital camera system, shooting down onto a seamless background. Art directing and styling was much easier than with conventional equipment. Each minor adjustment to the set was instantly viewable on the monitor, due to constant refresh, so Harper House art directors didn’t have to wait for a Polaroid each time. The alphabet was constructed and shot one character at a time in a painstaking process of arranging candy corn, cranberries and gumdrops, and saved as individual digital files. The backgrounds were shot on separate days, and styled by the Harper House creative team.

Once the files were introduced into Harper House’s premedia system, shadows were balanced, imperfections retouched and the dimensions of each character standardized. At the same time, work was being done preparing the database for production. Names were grouped into 4 categories: long even, long odd, short even and short odd, according to the number of characters. As the database streamed it’s information to a Xeikon DCP/50D digital press, the appropriate pictures - in this case letters made of candy corn, etc. - were imported into their respective fields on the card, and centered vertically and horizontally. The result is a collection of letter-shaped piles of candy corn spelling the names of each recipient.

The intention of the project was to illustrate the potential of VDP, beyond the trite, black-type-only usage normally associated with personalized mailing. The response was overwhelmingly positive, resulting in several requests from recipients to produce something similar for them. For more information on how Harper House can help you realize a VDP success story, contact sales a representative.