Gareth Jones hears how the Stroke Association saved £30,000 a year by using a web-based publishing tool for its printed marketing leaflets.

The Stroke Association provide around 300 local services under its Life After Stroke brand. Each is unique, with the services offered being determined at a local level and changing to reflect demand and the funding partner’s priorities.

Before launching the Life After Stroke brand, local service co-ordinators would produce their own materials. Jo Fisher, senior marketing officer at The Stroke Association, explains: “Co-ordinators need leaflets and posters to promote their services. Generic materials aren’t specific enough, external designers are too expensive and our central marketing team doesn’t have the resources to design individual items for each service.”

“Therefore local co-ordinators were creating their own leaflets and posters. This was time-consuming, the finished materials looked home-made, and were completely off-brand”.

Finished design “professional”

The Association began using the Prinkk web-based design tool in January this year, having previously assisted with beta-testing the product as it was being designed in 2009.

Fisher continues: “We created some templates for uploading to our Prinkk design & print website. Now, local co-ordinators log-in, choose a template and edit the content in the Prinkk editing interface. They can also select images from an asset library. We ensure their finished design looks professional and complies with our brand by restricting them to house fonts, house colours, and locking the position of certain fields.”

She adds: “They can save their design for future editing and/or print proof copies to show other staff. They can order printed copies through the software, print in-house or save their file as a jpg for emailing. As a double-check, my team get to see all designs before they go to print, and can request alterations to make sure all items are on-brand.”

Sarah Clay, assistant regional manager at The Stroke Association’s North West region, said, “Up until our Prinkk site was launched, we designed leaflets for our various services in-house, typically using a mixture of Word and Publisher.

Using the Prinkk templates has saved us many hours, and the finished leaflets are so much more professional than we were able to create before.” The Prinkk editing software is now also used by other departments at the Stroke Association for creating local newsletters and fundraising posters.

Templates for recruitment ads and web banners are expected to be added soon.