The following is a true story.

A friend of ours recently opened a piece of mail from her homeowners insurance company and was appalled. The envelope contained a letter and a brochure. And both of them would have been better left unsent.

The letter was a typical form letter recommending that our friend consider insuring her car with this company. The message was not out of the ordinary, but the mistakes were. Sentences within the letter ranged from poorly written to actually grammatically incorrect, and the letter concluded with the assertion that this insurance company would be “happy to suite your needs.”

The brochure, believe it or not, was worse.

Instead of hiring a printing company or even using a desktop publishing program, the geniuses running the operation opted to construct this brochure elementary school art project style. That’s right, folks, someone actually sat down with a gluestick and got busy gluing the graphics onto the brochure by hand. The sloppy edges were a dead giveaway that someone tried to save a few bucks.

What You Send Says a Lot About You

The well-meaning staff of this insurance company thought that they were sending out marketing materials, when in actuality, these pieces were the opposite of marketing. Instead of luring our friend in and getting her interested in a new service, the company made her question their credibility as an insurance company. She couldn’t help but wonder, If I ever actually need to make a claim, will they try to fix my house with a gluestick?

Don’t let your printed pieces send the wrong message. There may be some aspects of your business that can be handled with DIY jobs, but designing and constructing marketing materials probably isn’t one of them. Professional designers and printers will make sure that your printed pieces actually bolster your company’s image instead of bringing it down.

And if there are any holdouts out there who still want to make their own brochures, we beg you to avoid puffy paint, pipe cleaners, glitter, crayons, and gluesticks.