Marketing Mistake: a Lesson Learned

For the past couple weeks I’ve been writing all about low-cost marketing ideas for businesses here in Northern Colorado.  As marketing budgets have been shrinking I’ve been asked more frequently, “What else can we do since we’re on such a tight budget.”  So as of late, I’ve even turned to ValPak of Northern Colorado as a potential resource that I can direct clients to, looking for the cheapest option.  I was skeptical at first.  I’ve never heard of anyone getting stellar results from ValPak but I thought it was worth a try.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Here’s what happened:

We generally handle all of the interaction with a vendor or media outlet so that our customers don’t have the added hassle.  However, in this case, I put ValPak of Northern Colorado in touch directly with my client in order to further cut down on our time to save them additional money.  Boy was that a mistake.  After designing the advertisement and turning it over to them for production, they apparently modified the ad into something that looks like the rest of their cluttered ads.  They took an ad that looked like it was designed by a professional and crammed so much additional junk into the ad that it now looks like an advertisement for a flea market designed by an amateur.  I was shocked when I saw the ad in my mailbox.

While destroying the client’s ad, they destroyed our relationship and will once again be off our list of people we trust with our clients’ marketing dollars.  Sorry ValPak of Northern Colorado.  I should have known better.  Working with an agency isn’t what you’re used to.  You stick to coupons for vacuum shops and handy men and we’ll protect our clients from your graphic design interns.