Building a Better Brochure
by Andrew Shedden
It's a seemingly little known fact that you can’t bore your customers into buying from you. Let me rephrase that. It's a well-known but little practiced fact that you can’t bore your customers into buying from you.
In the world of business, boring brochures are the rule, not the exception. Many companies mail out thousands of boring brochures and mournfully wail when they receive no response.
Here are a few key points to keep in mind the next time you’re planning to put together a brochure. These points will help you banish boredom, trounce tedium, and eliminate ennui.
Creative
How many brochures do you receive from companies that include pictures of their buildings? How much have you bought from these same vendors as a result of their product brochures showing a picture of their buildings?
People, we can do better than this. Every business is as unique as a fingerprint. Your business has a distinct personality waiting to come out of the closet (I said your business). You need to tap into that personality and run with it.
So why do companies spend thousands of dollars on brochures with no creative concept? Because being able to devise creative concepts is a form of specialized knowledge. We all know that specialized knowledge isn’t common knowledge and costs money. I recommend that you spend the money. Good creative work is an investment that pays (with interest).
Copy
Your copywriting must avoid falling into the cliché-ridden traps that capture businesses with alarming regularity. Don't accept copywriting that is derivative or lazy. For example:
Many brochures contain the obligatory group staff photo with the customary “Our Greatest Asset is Our Staff” caption. Just once I would like to see a caption under a staff photo that stated “The usual group of goldbricking, backsliding, malingering, incompetent whiners. If you entrust your job to this group of socially maladjusted outlaws you will be sorely disappointed.” The point isn’t solely cynical, as it’s extremely easy to fall into the realm of cliché when writing copy.
Be afraid, very afraid of the “This Little Piggy” approach to writing. Typically, this style of copywriting has sentences that begin with a disproportionate number of we’s. The word we is usually followed by some banal observations or facts. These observations are about as illuminating as a dentist saying she has a drill in her office. For example:
We feature sentient human beings on our order desk
We have computers in our offices
We have the latest software
We graduated from high school
We have the latest equipment
The point of copywriting in business is to influence beliefs while motivating desired action. The simple fact is that the prospects reading your brochure are interested in what you can do for them. Be sure your brochure is replete with useful reader centred and benefit laden copywriting.
Design
The role of graphic design is to reconstitute disparate visual elements into a comprehensive, cohesive, and inspirationally persuasive whole. Good design can be viewed as the icing on the cake. It finishes the job but shouldn't overpower it. Ultimately, graphic design is very subjective and beauty truly is in the eyes of the beholder. I can tell you that whether the butterfly on your brochure is blue or orange isn’t going to make a great deal of difference to your annual sales.
Printing
Your printing partner can make or break all of the care taken for your creative work, copywriting, and design. Make sure you see samples of work similar to the brochure you’re proposing to have printed. Virtually every printer is capable of one or two colour printing. Be very careful when having your brochure printed as a higher degree of expertise is required for full (process, four, five, or six) colour printing.
Brochure production is a complicated undertaking. If you are lacking in even one of the above mentioned areas you’ll dramatically reduce the effectiveness of this key component of marketing communications. Your best bet may be to contact a full service firm with expertise from creative through printing to manage your entire project.
