Can a Leaflet Design Be So Bad, It’s Good?
Flyer Design
A few days ago, I found a leaflet under my windshield that was so cluttered and confusing, I spent about half an hour studying it. Maybe that’s what the creators wanted – a leaflet that was so difficult to read, readers would not be able to resist the challenge of reading it.
Let’s start with the content. I’ll show you the raw content first, then show you how they styled it.
Raw Content
Invitation
Blessing Our Community Through Giving
Free!
Come Early To Register!
[images of bicycle, iPod, gift card, gas nozzle, camera]
This Sunday 2:00 pm
You will not want to miss this awesome display of giving back to our community! You must be present to accept your prize! We will be giving away free Wal-Mart gift cards, gas cards, MP3 Player, Digital Cameras, a new bicycle and other gifts!
We would like to invite guests to come and try the most exciting church in the Joliet area! We are giving away prizes to bless people in our community!
We ask that you and your family attend!
For Transportation or Information Call:
PH# xxx-xxx-xxxx
This Sunday!!!
xxxxx Church
xxx yyyy Road, Joliet IL
__________________________________
Setting aside grammatical errors and the whole notion of a church giving away prizes to attract members, I think we can agree the general approach is appealing, especially in this working class community. However, let’s see how they muddle the message with their formatting.
How Content Is Styled in the Leaflet
INVITATION
Blessing Our Community Through Giving
FREE!
Come Early To Register!
[images of bicycle, iPod, gift card, gas nozzle, camera]
THIS SUNDAY 2:00 pm
You will not want to miss this awesome display of giving back to our community! You must be present to accept your prize! We will be giving away free Wal-Mart gift cards, gas cards, MP3 Player, Digital Cameras, a new bicycle and other gifts!
We would like to invite guests to come and try the most exciting church in the Joliet area! We are giving away prizes to bless people in our community!
We ask that you and your family attend!
For Transportation or Information Call:
PH# xxx-xxx-xxxx
THIS SUNDAY!!!
xxxxx Church
xxx yyyy Road, Joliet IL
___________________________
I’m not doing the design justice, so here is the actual leaflet.
Leaflet Design Made Simple?
What do you think? Does this look more like a flyer or a ransom note?
- At first glance, the leaflet seems to be offering a free invitation – but to what?
- Identifying the sponsor is difficult
- Too many font styles and sizes make it nearly impossible to focus on any one part of the leaflet
- Too many exclamation points make everything seem equally unimportant
- Gift images belong at the top, where they will not disturb the flow of reading
- The explanation of the event and the hook are the hardest things to find on the page
Here’s how I would highlight the content -
Invitation
Blessing Our Community Through Giving
Free!
Come Early To Register!
[images of bicycle, iPod, gift card, gas nozzle, camera]
This Sunday 2:00 pm
You will not want to miss this awesome display of giving back to our community! You must be present to accept your prize! We will be giving away free Wal-Mart gift cards, gas cards, MP3 Player, Digital Cameras, a new bicycle and other gifts!
We would like to invite guests to come and try the most exciting church in the Joliet area! We are giving away prizes to bless people in our community!
We ask that you and your family attend!
For Transportation or Information Call:
PH# xxx-xxx-xxxx
This Sunday!!!
xxxxx Church
xxx yyyy Road, Joliet IL
_________________________________
Copywriting Issues
Make Your Value Proposition and Call to Action Clear
What is this leaflet asking me to do, and why should I do it? These are questions every leaflet should answer in crystal clear fashion. Let’s examine this bit of text, which contains the right elements, just not in the right places.
You will not want to miss this awesome display of giving back to our community! You must be present to accept your prize! We will be giving away free Wal-Mart gift cards, gas cards, MP3 Player, Digital Cameras, a new bicycle and other gifts!
We would like to invite guests to come and try the most exciting church in the Joliet area! We are giving away prizes to bless people in our community!
The message contains good ideas, but does not flow logically, making it difficult to understand just what’s going on. We could rearrange and slightly edit the copy to make it more clear.
We invite you to come and try the most exciting church in the Joliet area! We will be giving away prizes to bless people in our community – but you must be present to accept your prize!
We will be giving away Wal-Mart gift cards, gas cards, MP3 Player, Digital Cameras, a new bicycle, and other gifts! You will not want to miss this awesome display of giving back to our community!
Give Your Leaflet a Powerful Title
Even though the edited copy is much stronger, unless the leaflet has a strong title, chances are slim people will read it. You’ll notice that this leaflet doesn’t really have a title, other than by default, “Invitation Free!” Imagine how much more interesting this flier would be with the right title. Perhaps something like -
Win Free Prizes at xxxxx Church This Sunday
Yes, “free prizes” is redundant, but both words are powerful hooks. Everybody likes free, and everybody likes prizes. Everybody likes to win, too. The point is, a strong title, combined with strong header images, draw people in and make them want to read further. I’ll sacrifice a little grammatical correctness if it doubles or triples the chances that someone will read my flyer.
If nothing else, this case study demonstrates the importance of design and content in creating an effective leaflet. You need both, and you should overdo neither. This designer has gone way overboard and in doing so, obscured his message. Likewise, adding several more paragraphs of content would not attract interest – if anything, a lengthy message would put more people off.
I started by asking, can a leaflet design be so bad, it’s good? What do you think? I say “no”, because the only people who will take the time to decipher this type of flyer are content nerds like me and people with way, way too much time on their hands. Following best practices for leaflet design is not only safe, but successful.
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Brad, this was an excellent case study. Sadly, it’s typical of my many church marketing efforts. I get faith based emails that suffer from the same syndrome, ten different colors and fonts, ten urls at the end and so many calls to action I never know what I’m really supposed to do. The marketing message ends up looking and feeling like someone threw up on the page. I’m glad that you used this to help us all improve our messaging. That old adage, KISS really does apply in marketing.
Hi Karen, That’s been my experience as well, and even worse when it comes to websites, which is a whole other can of worms. I think a big part of the problem with churches is that volunteers are coming together based on interest more than expertise, which results in an unwieldy group that tries to include everyone’s ideas. The spirit is willing, but the results are weak.
ROFL! “The spirit is willing, but the results are weak.” You have just coined a new marketing line, I love this and can’t wait to share it with my friends who specialize in Church marketing. lol!
Hi Brad,
I like things simple, and deciphering this type of message is all too hard for me.
Although I can see how this kind of message would draw in the readers attention, this is only useful if the attention leads is likely to lead to action, which is not likely to be the case if the message is not clear and simple.
With regard to grammar errors, I would think that the range of circumstances in which producing material with purposeful grammar errors would constitute an effective marketing practice would be very limited indeed. Perhaps one case where such errors might be appropriate in the case of a radio station aimed at an alternative audience – provided it is made clear to the target audience that the errors are indeed purposeful and deliberate.
But in the vast majority of cases, these types of errors will only serve to create questions with regard to the professionalism of your organization, which in turn will cause doubt in the minds of your target audience as to whether your organization can be trusted to provide reliable service on a consistent basis.
Hi Andrew, Point taken on grammatical errors. I’d say the potential harm depends on the type of error. In my mind, a redundancy is far less severe than a run on sentence or misspelling. But in general I do agree that it’s best to adhere to the rules. Now that you’ve got me thinking, in the example above, the redundancy could be avoided easily -
Free!
Win Prizes at xxxxx Church This Sunday
See? Your comment made our theoretical leaflet even better. Thank you!
I like your analysis Brad. I’m thinking one other way to go would be to drop the computer involvement entirely. Make it look even more home made – handwritten and copied – simply to get across the feel of an individual’s personal commitment to a cause. I’m still more attracted to car wash signs done in crayon than vinyl lettering.
Hi Fred, You can get the best of both worlds by using a font that looks like handwriting.
I’m not sure what stylistic effect this leaflet was aiming at, but to me it doesn’t convey anything in particular.
We run a fundraising coffee morning every november in aid of funds for diabetes research. It makes a reasonable amount from a relatively small effort but our flyers have obviously been weak and ineffective in the past and I will pass this advice to the volunteer team to see if we can be a bit more professional this year!
Thanks Brad.
Jackie, Good luck! Diabetes research is a great cause and I’m honored if I can be of assistance.