Expert's Panel

A collection of timely and important topics posed to our panel of experts.

Can you provide or recommend good product marketing brochures?

 (ep1061)
1. There are two types. One is called a capabilities brochure, which is designed to sell your company, not a product. The key elements that good ones have are this: very nice, expensive and heavy paper; there is an expensive finish on that paper; it has a very good choice of tasteful colors; it has a photograph of key people in the company looking directly at the camera; it has those executive's signatures, or chops, somewhere in the first three pages. The message of the brochure is, "Buddy, you can trust me." You look at any good capabilities brochure and they will always have these elements. If you are talking about a product brochure, that's different. That has to do with specifications, how to use it, the application, etc. They don't want thick, heavy paper; It can be 1, 2 or 4 color. The recipient just wants the basic information.
2. There are three levels of paper: glossy, which was just described. There is a near glossy, which might or might not be. There is also something called clay paper. Clay is added to the mix and when it goes through the rollers it comes out with that slick, smooth look. Ink goes nicely on it and it has a good look. Be careful in this industry, if you are putting technical information on clay paper, the engineer doesn't buy it. He sizes it up right away that it is from those marketing idiots and I want something from the good engineering people. For technical or product information, it is better to have one color, plain paper, maybe upping the weight a little bit perhaps 22 or 24 pound paper for heft. Overall, all brochures have to look good. Capability is look good, look smooth, look professional. For technical it is to look like something the engineer reads every day. It used to be that technical journals were done in black and white. Now everyone is printing in color so maybe there is a slow change happening, but I still think black on non-glossy paper is the way to go for technical. The technical brochure has to inform, aid in conviction, and be general enough that it forces a follow-up. If you explain everything in the piece of paper, you will never know what happened. You want them to call so you can probe and answer questions and sell, because you will never get an order from a brochure.
3. You want to get involved with features-benefits-proofs always when you produce data sheets. Also consider PDF files on your web—that's becoming a bit more popular. We have a lot more flexibility now with the web in that you can produce some vibrant colors without enduring the cost of printing those colors on a data sheet. However, I think we will always be with paper. You might also use a CD-ROM with the files that are PDF so things can't be changed.
4. In my opinion you want to have as few specs as possible because they change. It's your quote form and performance guarantee where you get to be hard with numbers. The purpose of the brochure is to tweak interest. You need the features, benefits and general description of the product. No detailed specifications