A printing disaster of the highest order

February 24, 2011 in for Churches

So we designed and printed some postcards to promote our upcoming kid’s sports morning.

Here’s how they look:

As they were being handed out to a child to invite his friends, he responded “that’s a bit rude”.

Why?

On the reverse of the postcard was printed the following:

Could the printer have made a bigger mistake?!

This artwork doesn’t appear on the back of all of the postcards, and thankfully, we’d only just started to distribute the postcards and have been able to pluck out the cards with this artwork on the back.

I would never have though to check each postcard for this kind of mistake – now I will.

It’s poor form, and I’m still trying to get in touch with the printer to let them know.

This reminds me of the ‘7 worst online ad placements of all time‘.

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  • http://st-eutychus.com Nathan

    Hi Steve,

    This is, as I mentioned on Twitter, pretty atrocious. This could have been massively damaging if a single copy had got to somebody who had gone to the media for the lols, or motivated by something more sinister. For both you and the printer – I’m surprised the printer hasn’t offered a discount/freebie on the job – saying “it’ll never happen again” doesn’t really seem to cut it.

    Imagine if this had gone straight to a journalist – or two a kid who got upset. Even blaming the printer wouldn’t have undone the damage to your reputation. And would have done massive damage to them. I really am shocked they haven’t offered anything other than a token apology. Wow.

    Obviously, relationships with suppliers are important – and you want to be above board in the way you deal with them, and avoid anything that looks or feels manipulative – but I’d say you’re a little upset that this has happened and that you’d like some sort of token contribution towards the cost of the job. This would almost definitely get a run in the paper – especially if you’ve still got a copy of one of the offending cards.