When I’m on the road, I always take a look at tourism brochure racks.
Take a look at this rack in the Havre Amtrak station.
Click to view the entire image or see flatheadbeacon.com/images/uploads/tourismbrochurerack.jpg.
It’s a typical floor-standing tourism brochure rack that you might see around your town or at the local chamber of commerce office.
I took the photo at this height and angle because I wanted to simulate the view the “average” person has when scanning the rack for something interesting to do or visit.
The critical part is that this is also the likely view they have of your brochure.
If you’re the tourist and this is your eye level view:
- Which brochures get your attention and provoke you to pick them up?
- Which leave you with no idea what they’re for?
A critical three inches
The critical question is this: Which ones easily tell their story in the top three inches?
Those top three inches are the most important real estate on a rack brochure because that’s the part everyone can see.
Everything below that point is meaningless if the top three inches can’t provoke someone to pick it up and open it. That cool info inside and on the back? Meaningless if they don’t pick it up.
Whenever I see one of these racks, I always wonder how many graphic designers put enough thought into the design of these rack pieces to print a sample, fold it up and test drive it on a real rack in their community.
If they tried that, do you think it would change the design? How about the text and background colors how they contrast? The headline? Font sizes? Font weights? Font styles?
I’ll bet it would.
I guarantee you it isn’t an accident that you can clearly see “Visitor Tips Online”, “Raft”, “Rafting Zipline” and “Fishing” from several feet away.
Brochure goals
The primary goal of a brochure isn’t “To get picked up, opened, read and provoke the reader to visit (or make a reservation at) the lodging, attraction or restaurant”, nor is it to jam as many words as possible onto the brochure in an attempt to win an undeclared war of words.
The first goal of the brochure is to get someone to pick it up.
That’s why you see “Raft”, “Fishing” and “Visitor Tips Online”. Either they care or they don’t. If they don’t, you shouldn’t either. From that point, it needs to satisfy the reader’s interests and need to know. If you can’t get them to look at your brochure – all that design and printing expense is wasted.
Is that the goal you communicated to your designer when you asked them to make a brochure? Or was it that you wanted it to be blue, use a gorgeous photo or use a font that “looks Victorian”?
None of that matters if they don’t pick it up.
Heightened awareness
I wonder if brochure designers produce different brochures for the same campaign so they can test the highest performing design.
Do they design differently for different displays? What would change about a brochure’s design if the designer knew the piece was intended for a rack mounted at eye level? What would change if the brochure was designed to lay flat at the check-in counter or on a desk?
Now consider how you would design a floor rack’s brochure to catch the eye of an eight year old, or someone rather tall? Would it provoke a mom with an armload of baby, purse and diaper bag to go to the trouble to pick it up?
This isn’t nitpicking, it’s paying attention to your audience so you can maximize the performance of the brochure.
“Maximize the performance of the brochure” sounds pretty antiseptic. Does “attract enough visitors to allow you to make payroll this week” sound better?
Would that provoke you to go to the trouble to test multiple brochure designs against each other? To design and print different ones for different uses?
This doesn’t apply to MY business
You can’t ignore these things if your business doesn’t use rack brochures.
The best marketing in the world will fail if no one “picks it up”, no matter what media you use.
What’s one more visitor per day (or hour) worth to your business? That’s what this is really about.
Want to learn more about Mark or ask him to write about a strategic, operations or marketing problem? See Mark’s site, contact him on Twitter, or email him at [email protected].