There it was, attached to the front door with a piece of clear scotch tape – a flier for a local pizza joint.

“It just testes better?” I read it again just to be sure.  Surely, this had to be the worst typo in any piece of advertising that I had ever seen.  Did it make it onto my fridge?  You bet it did, but for all the wrong reasons.  I had no plans to call in for a double-cheese pizza, but I did want to show all of my friends the ad that had evoked my childish giggle.

This certainly wasn’t the first or last piece of advertising-gone-terribly-wrong that I had ever seen.  No, I am a faithful viewer of Jay Leno’s “Headlines” segment in which the late night comedian regularly displays advertising materials featuring typos, misprints, and ill-advised photos resulting in awkwardness, embarrassment, and double-entendre.

So why do these types of ads so frequently end up in our mailboxes, on our TV screens, and scotch taped to our front doors?  I would suggest that frequently they are the result of a busy, overworked company owner, president, or marketing executive attempting to produce a promotional piece under a tight deadline and through a process which they may not understand.  Perhaps they thought that they could save money by producing the piece themselves.

Such calculations, while understandable, fail to account for the true cost of poorly produced advertising blunders.  When you plaster the neighborhood with pizza fliers featuring male anatomical terminology, you harm your reputation and you miss out on the customers which you might have attracted with a well-produced promotional piece.

So, as you work out your marketing processes and procedures, consider hiring an ad agency to design and produce quality work.  Doing so will free up your employees to focus on your company’s strategy and profit producing activities.  You never know, it might also save you from an embarrassing appearance on the Jay Leno show.