Archives: DL cards and leaflets

The coffee machine flyer

Espresso machine flyer

Yeaaaah…. No.

I once flew overseas into Rome on an Italian airline and it was noticeable at the breakfast meal service before landing that several passengers refrained from drinking any coffee or tea.

They were saving themselves for a ‘real Italian espresso experience’ and didn’t want to spoil it by indulging in whatever it was the airline was serving. They wanted to be good and ready for that first caffeine hit on Italian soil.

Sure enough, there was a café straight off the walkway from the plane, before passport control and customs, and the eager passengers piled in there for the first espresso of the day.

So when someone offers me ‘The real Italian espresso experience’ that’s what I think of, the sight of those people planning and looking forward and savouring the experience of drinking an espresso in Italy.

No disrespect to this coffee machine supplier who obviously understands the significance of experiencing an espresso in Italy and who, I’m sure, makes great tasting coffee, better than much of what gets served in cafes up and down the country, but don’t try telling me this is real or Italian or possibly even, for those of us who have experienced a real Italian espresso, an espresso.

I’m not buying it (although I’m always happy for anybody else to buy me a coffee and will never turn my nose up at it, even when it comes in a ridiculously tall glass and looks like liquid fertiliser).

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The insurance flyer

Insurance brochure

A flyer from an insurance company – nothing to get excited about – but what intrigued me about it was the meaning of the heart-shaped hand sign. When they urge us to get the most out of our insurance – beyond, I guess, the actual provision of insurance as requested – are they seriously inviting us to fall in love with it?

Because that’s what it looks like to me although maybe I’m misreading the signals here (wouldn’t be the first time, Lord no).

So. Are these the symbolic hands of the insurance company being used to convey their tender feelings towards us (and hence their eagerness to supply us with extra ‘benefits’, whatever they may be), or are they supposed to represent our hands indicating our new-found love for all the great things that an insurance policy can offer us? Because, you see, I don’t think it’s at all clear what’s going on here.

And while the wild romantic in me is fully in agreement with the prospect of launching willy-nilly into a new and potentially exciting emotional relationship with an insurance company, the level-headed voice of experience tells me that it is prudent not to get too involved in a liaison where the expectations and intentions of either party are not fully understood.

This is especially the case with providers of insurance with whom, in the past, my relationships have tended to be somewhat fractured and tempestuous.

So excuse my hesitation and unwillingness to commit whole-heartedly when I say that rather than ‘feeling the love’ – which may or may not be genuine on their part – my preference is rather to see this flyer as just another cut-price marketing campaign employing a stock feel-good image of no particular significance in order to prompt a vapid sense of connection in a world of alienated strangers.

In other words, they don’t really care; never did, never will.

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The property agents’ flyer

Real Estate flyer

BUY. SELL. MOVE. MAKE A COMMISSION.

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The rubber duck flyer

Real estate mailer

Oooh, ducky.

I’ve looked at this for a long time (OK, OK – I gave it a couple of minutes casual thought while waiting for the kettle to boil) and I still have no idea what the duck signifies.

It’s from a real estate agent so duck… bathroom… home… buy massively over-priced real estate… Nope, I thought I had it there for a moment but then it just slipped away like water off a duck’s… or whatever.

Still it made me look, so there.

Another bafflingly idiosyncratic touch is the yellow underscore _Know which suggests something vaguely hi-teccy, a computer program perhaps because we all know those things are used a lot in the arcane world of coding which means they must know what they are doing and be pretty shit-hot real_estate_agents. I’d let them talk me into anything.

But the duck, the duck… I dunno.

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The hairdresser’s flyer

Hairdressing salon DM

This example of a print promo certainly lifts the bar in terms of bling. It’s a three-part construction that appeared in my post box advertising a local hairdressing salon. There’s a DL-size double-sided flyer printed on 300gsm card, a business card size frequent buyer card and, best of all, a pen to fill it in! Somebody’s thinking.

The rewards card features the company name spelt out in silver foil, cursive script and everything. Dead classy. It’s remarkable that somebody is giving away offset print with foiling for free. With a pen. Don’t forget the pen.

It makes me almost sad to realise that I get my hair cut on a quarterly basis, paying $12 to Con the Barber. Such print is clearly wasted on me but I applaud the effort.

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