Corporate Brochures – Dos and Don’ts

Doesn’t it look great?

It took months to put it together but there it is in all its glory. Your new, shiny, gorgeous corporate brochure is ready to be distributed.

Are you pleased with it?

Hmm…if you’re that pleased there may be a problem – let me tell you why.

Giving in to temptation

Everyone does it now and then but temptation has its place and there is no room for it in your brochure.

Often, when you start to think about the content for your corporate brochure you:

• Talk about you
• You give your opinions on you
• You talk about what you want to achieve

Boring.

Don’t get me wrong. What you do is incredibly valuable but people (i.e. Joe Public) aren’t interested in what you think about your self, they are interested in themselves.

Doing it right

With the economy being what it is at the moment, the fact that you’re investing in a glossy, expensive corporate brochure tells the market (and all your competitors) that you’re doing well; you have a motivated and engaged team who are working their butts off to make you look great.

Fantastic – by why do all of this?

Well, a good brochure will help you:

• Gain investor confidence
• Attract new clients
• Show existing clients what you can do for them
• Impress the great and the good

But the problem is that there aren’t that many companies out there who do it right.

There’s no escaping the fact that you need a large team to pull off a cracking end result – designers, photographers, a great brochure copywriter. These guys are all experienced in what they do and can easily collaborate to achieve the ultimate end result.

However the main problem lies within your company. Although one person is assigned the headache of pulling the expert team together, the review stage is usually done by many people (CEOs, Directors etc.) which means there are too many opinions flying around the room.

Your brochure should not contain any corporate speak – in fact your expert copywriter would have gone to great pains to ensure the language is simple, accessible to all, clear and powerful which is not an easy thing to pull off.  And yet by the time the copy has gone round everyone it’s mutated into an overly intellectual hotchpotch of meaningless drivel.

The design has been mauled mutating the understated, tasteful design into something way too ostentatious. And the wonderful photography of your staff and company has been replaced by dodgy stock images.

Why?

If you call in a group of experts to create your corporate brochure let them get on with it – they know what they are doing.

The perfect formula

Your corporate brochure has to be something people will want to pick up and read. If they don’t it becomes an extremely expensive coaster.

Use it wisely and make sure yours includes:

• A personal letter written by your Chairman or CEO
• Photos of your staff (be proud of them and show them off)
• Testimonials from customers
• Engaging case studies to show how you have helped clients overcome typical challenges
• A profile of your organisation
• Benefits driven copy to show how you can help your customers
• High level product descriptions and images
• Full and correct contact details

To make sure yours is done right make sure you start the process of with a plan. Decide amongst yourselves what you want to achieve, how you want it to look and how you want it to sound.

Then provide your expert team with a detailed brief for each element – design, photography and copywriting.

After that, sit back and let them get on with it.

Setting out your vision at the outset will ensure your get the result you were looking for.

Time to have your say

I’ve spouted on long enough, now I want to hear from you.

What, in your opinion, makes a good brochure?