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Planners are useful for everyone! Even people who are tied to their smartphone and swear by productivity apps to get through the day, there’s something about a pen-and-paper approach that really helps memos stick.
That’s why it’s a great idea to consider creating a branded planner wire bound book, not just for your internal staff but also as giveaways for your clients, or potential customers at trade shows, or your event delegates. People love a good freebie, especially a useful one! Branded planners are fab for getting your company logo seen by many people, as it’s likely they will be used while out-and-about, at the office, or even at home where family members and nosey housemates can see them. A wire bound planner is particularly useful, as pages can be easily torn out – ideal for passing notes in meetings, or pinning important messages to notice boards.
A planner also helps to reflect your style and values, as you’re able to dictate what you want included on every single page. This means a different message, image, or planner style from jotter pad to day-of-the-week diary, can each have your branding and vision included on it. You may want to minimise your actual company branding, perhaps including a logo and business information on the inside of a cover, and make the most of the opportunity to inspire people with your messages and encouragement to lead an organised life!
So: what should you consider when creating the perfect wire bound planner?
1. To Brand, Or Not To Brand?
While a planner is a great chance to plaster your branding everywhere, it could detract from the usefulness of the product and put people off using it. That defeats the point of it!
That’s why you need to think about how and where you’re going to include information about your company. Even without extensive company branding, you can still keep your style values: have page lines the same colour as your logo, or ensure the language used reflects your brand tonality, for example.
2. Consider Your Audience
Who is going to use this planner? Ask yourself if you want to make the most of cost-effective bulk printing by creating a multi-use wire bound book, or if you want to print this planner for a specific event or group of people.
For example, if you want to give every new employee a planner, it’s a good idea to include company values, mission statements, and general rules on the first few pages. This way, every member of staff has something to use for taking notes during their induction training, and can easily refer to important company information included in the planner.
If your audience is for delegates at a specific event, decide what action you want them to take as a result of receiving the planner. Is your company ethos to strive for organisational clarity? Perhaps you want to include access to exclusive online materials for delegates. You may even wish to include some product or service information, so that delegates can turn into potential new customers.
3. What Elements Do You Want To Include?
Your planner doesn’t have to have the same pages all the way through. This is great news! It means that there are more opportunities for your planner to be used by others – some may wish for a useful week-to-view diary, while others want a jotter for meeting brainstorms.
Decide the purpose of the planner, and break down the different sections you want to include depending on who is most likely to be using it. Common and useful sections include: lined areas for lists, marked To Do pages, basic lined paper for notes, blank paper (perhaps with a border) for sketching, diary elements such as page-per-day, and bullet points for quick journaling.
4. How Many Pages Do You Need?
When creating your planner, it’s best to think about how long it needs to be used for. If you’re giving it out as part of your event presentation pack, it won’t need to be as long as a new employee handbook, for example.
Remember the golden rule of creating any booklet: pages must be in multiples of four! This includes your cover: you’ll have a front cover, a front inside page, a back inside page, and a back cover. These are great areas for adding your company information, branding, logos, or event details, as they are the most commonly visible areas of the planner.
5. Which Size And Orientation Best Suits Your Planner Style?
Most wire bound planners come with portrait orientation as standard, which means the spiral binding is placed at the left of the front cover on the long side.
However, if you want to have a different take on traditional planner layouts, or want to suit a specific purpose such as sketching instead of writing, consider a landscape orientation. This is where the wire binding is placed on the short edge of the page.
A planner can be anything from A6 right up to A4, which means you have great flexibility in the size you choose. Consider whether you anticipate this booklet to be a desktop-bound notepad for use in the office, or a hold-in-one-hand jotter for being out-and-about. You can even choose a slimline DL size for a narrow pocket-friendly shopping-list style planner, or pick a square wire bound book as your basis for something a little bit different.
It all boils down to who is going to use your wire bound planner, and what you want to get out of it. Do you want to make sure people know who you are, or what you stand for? The subtle marketing opportunities of a branded planner are plentiful: an inspirational quote here, a printed event invitation on the first page there… the opportunities are endless!
