The High-Quality Brochure Disaster

Speaker 1 0:00

So why don't you tell us the story about your high-quality brochures?

Speaker 2 0:04

you produced. Yeah, they're amazing, really glossy and top-end and beautiful photography. I spent an absolute arm and a leg on it. What year was this? Oh goodness, this will be 20 years ago. I bet. Yeah, it'll be 20 years ago. So back in the day, brochures were massive, weren't?

Speaker 1 0:19

they.

Speaker 2 0:20

Brochures were the main form of communicating, particularly B2B as well. Brochures were the main form of communicating, particularly B2B as well before websites, before websites yeah, back in the day yeah, that's what replaced brochures isn't it websites?

Speaker 1 0:29

yeah because you used to get a company if you're interested in them. They used to send you the company brochure. Yep, and it was always stressful, it was all stressful printing, it wasn't it?

Speaker 2 0:38

you still get that in some industries like kitchens yeah, yeah yeah, it's tactile, isn't it? Tactile products? So so, yeah, we did this. I think it's about 50 000 catalogues, high quality, high gloss, cost an absolute fortune and um, unfortunately, we put some old lady's phone number on the back of it and not our phone number. How the hell did that happen?

Speaker 2 0:57

I have no idea it was it, it was it was a um one digit out and it was like oh no, the amount of phone and this poor old lady getting all these phone calls and we had to employ a team of about half a dozen temps to come in and over.

Speaker 2 1:11

Stick it, it was was the type of you well, not me personally, but, yeah, the team I was working in. Obviously. I must admit, though, ever since, ever since. How many boxes is 50, 000 brochures. Oh god, is this a stock room full of bro? Yeah, I love a lot of brochures, yeah. Yeah, it took them a long, long time to overstick them, but it was cheaper than getting them all reprinted. It's just that feeling of it's just gut-wrenching feeling. When you realize what's happening, it's like oh my god. And then you look at it. It's like it is wrong. I wouldn't have missed that. How many phone?

Speaker 1 1:40

numbers did she get. How many phone calls did she get? How many phone calls did she get to?

Phone Call Fallout

Speaker 2 1:43

us. She phoned us within 48 hours. I think she'd had about 24 calls. She wasn't best off being a sunset.

Speaker 1 1:50

And it kept going because there's nothing once they're out there. You can't in them days. You couldn't do it Now. You could change the website. You've already handed out a thousand. You've got a thousand people Potentially. You're still going to ring it for the next year.

Speaker 2 2:02

I bet this is a mistake that most marketing people have made.

Speaker 1 2:04

Yeah, there are a lot of typos In some way or shape or form. We interviewed another. Weirdly, we've only had a few clients on here. You're one of three, I think, and if you want to hear about a typo and in one of her first roles, rachel for Huthway, she was doing a big exhibition down in Excel. She was doing a big exhibition down in Excel and she had then they did a 60,000 pounds worth of right in the center of Excel.

Speaker 1 2:31

It was one of the biggest things and they'd done it. And she worked for a big software as a service company and it said software right in massive letters all across.

Speaker 2 2:41

And it wasn't just on one side, it was on every each side and they were there.

Speaker 1 2:46

this was in the first hour that one of her team told her and we were like well, what did you do?

Speaker 2 2:53

It's like a three-day exhibition, yeah, so you just have to be anxious for the next three days, can you imagine it? How did you sleep? Awful, awful, I mean Because you don't do when you've done something daft like that, because it is easy to do and you can't. If you proofread in a brochure, you can't see the wood from times you still ain't gonna spot it. I think ever since I've done that, I've been so paranoid about printing stuff. I think even to the extent that back in the day when a bit younger used to proofread stuff on press for colors and stuff like that because it was quite color critical even phoning that phone number from the press just to 100, make sure it wasn't the mistake we're gonna make again. It's.

Mail Merge Nightmare

Speaker 1 3:31

It does make you a bit paranoid I mean, yeah, we've all made typos and press releases and all sorts of things um, okay, and the second one. The second one, you the of your two mistakes you've got when you did a mail merge. I'm not gonna lie, I've got probably 10 mail merge errors where it's merged the wrong.

Speaker 2 3:50

Yeah, so you'd a like mail merge.

Speaker 1 3:52

That's your first marketing. What's a mail merge? Yeah, seriously so like um.

Speaker 2 4:02

Oh my god, gen z is looking at me as well taking it from excel and putting it in word, basically as a let in a letter format all right.

Speaker 1 4:08

So, for instance, if you're merging let's say, let's say you've got a thousand people in a database and you want to send an email that you are one email to a thousand people in a database and you want to send an email that you are one email to a thousand people in back in the day you might even use for those, for your older listeners might remember when you used to have to do a mail merge for the labels, oh yeah, and it would do the labels for the posting. So the main, the idea, is that you could connect word or outlook to to excel and it would look for the sort look for way and then it would. So it says so, look for way. And then it would say it says hi Sinead, but everyone's done it wrong way. It says hi British wall.

Speaker 2 4:41

I accidentally, I mean you might take the wrong box or delete a column by, or delete one bit, so I think I'll just miss. I don't know what I've done in Excel, but it had misaligned all the names and the company names.

Speaker 2 4:58

So we'd sent it out to all like massive customers. How many customers are we talking? Oh, it's probably I'll be two and a half thousand, I would have thought top of my head. So quite a lot. It was a decent. It was a decent whack of people and all the names were wrong and they obviously they knew where the competitors were, so they were getting with with the competitor's name on it but their company name on it.

Speaker 1 5:15

Awful well, you have the competitor's name on it, but their company name on it Awful.

Speaker 2 5:18

But you have the competitor's name in your email. Yeah Well, it wasn't an email, was it? It was a printed one. So it would say so say you're my competitor. It would say, dear Chris from British Wall, and it was like and then you obviously the new other competitors were we've got some right IRA phone calls from customers had to write irf phone calls from customers.

Speaker 1 5:36

You don't even know our name. I'm still confused that you we said you sent a new, a letter from do you understand that?

Marketing Before Google and YouTube

Speaker 2 5:40

so you sent a letter and it had the customer, so it'd be like their first name. But then, yeah, we'd added their full name, but the competitors, the details details yeah, details in there that you shouldn't have said no, no it was just an address. It was not. It was there was no company.

Speaker 2 5:53

It was a generic kind of communications no there's nothing confident, nothing confidential in there, but nevertheless everyone's cute phone calls and um, I just died when I found it because that literally was my mistake. That is the one I will fess up to there. I had nobody else to blame for that one and uh, but again it was. We didn't have chat gpt, we didn't have Google to Google out or do a mail merge. I just had to figure stuff out back in the day and yeah, well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it With that.

Speaker 1 6:22

When you did stuff wrong, like now, like people, even five years ago, before AI, you had some sort of problem with meta or even, if we're talking recent social media, you could kind of Google it, find a site, then look through the forums, find the answer. Yeah, but before that, even before now. Now ai just gives you the answer, but back then it was like, oh, I've screwed this up, this is broken what do I do?

Speaker 2 6:50

there's no youtube. No, no, no, no youtube, no god I won't be able to get through the day. No, yeah it was.

Speaker 1 6:54

Yeah, it was good, it was. Well, it was good. There wasn't more mistakes. No, youtube was there. No, no, no, no, youtube. Yeah, god, I won't be able to get through the day, no, without being able to ask you a question. No, you just figured it out.

Reflecting on Pre-Digital Errors

Speaker 2 6:56

Yeah, it was good. It was Well, it was good. I'm surprised there wasn't more mistakes. Well, I'm sure there was no. It's probably pushed them aside. Yeah, we haven't got all day.