Marketing Materials

Marketing collateral printing

Marketing materials is the catch-all for the printed pieces that support a sale rather than being the sale: brochures, sell sheets, flyers, postcards, rack cards and inserts. Individually they are simple jobs. Collectively they are where brand consistency either holds or falls apart.

The usual failure is not quality, it is drift. A brochure printed last spring, a sell sheet run somewhere cheaper in the autumn and a flyer produced in a rush all end up on the same table looking like three different companies.

The core pieces

Brochures

Tri-fold, gate-fold, half-fold and roll-fold, each holding a different amount and reading in a different order. The fold is a structural decision, not a finishing one: it determines which panel is seen first and where a reader lands when they open it.

Sell sheets and rack cards

One product, one page, no folding. The discipline is ruthless editing rather than design, because a sell sheet that covers everything communicates nothing.

Flyers and postcards

Cheap, fast and disposable by design. Postcards double as a mailing piece, which changes the specification: size and thickness decide the postal rate, so the format should be settled before the design if it is going in the mail. See direct mail.

Keeping a set consistent

• Print the set together where you can, so stock and ink build match across pieces.
• Work to a colour standard. Our prepress team runs to G7 and GRACoL, so a reprint next year matches the one you have now.
• Print quantities you will actually use. Collateral dates faster than people expect, and a warehouse of superseded brochures is not a saving.
• Warehouse rather than over-order where a piece is stable, and release it as needed through fulfillment.

Short runs and personalization

Digital printing makes a hundred brochures a real order, which changes how collateral gets bought: print for this quarter, correct it, reprint. It also allows regional versions, contact details per branch or an offer per segment within a single run through variable data printing.

Longer runs of a settled piece move to offset, where the per-piece cost drops once the setup is absorbed.