New Trailer Brochures

[NW Cat Owner]

Okay, fresh from the factory visit yesterday, here's some shots of their new brochures. As I mentioned in the general post about the visit, they do use photos of their older style trailers, but the verbal text applies to their newer style. It's a very nice, four fold brochure, printed on decent weight paper with full color. A ton of work (and money!) went into these brochures, I'm sure. I've not read them all the way through - yet. Was kind of busy uploading photos yesterday and today.

They're pretty big, too. 11" high and 17" long when folded all the way out. So, it was a bit tricky getting images of them and they're not in the same order as how you'd see it folded up and then unfolded as you're reading it. But you'll be able to figure out what's what (hopefully!).

I'll post each brochure individually as each one has 4 images. Great, since I can only post 4 images per post.

[NW Cat Owner]

5.0TA brochure

[NW Cat Owner]

Well, now this is interesting. Is that a photo of the 5.0 of the stairs going up to the bed? It looks like it from the frame work along the ceiling and the different counter on the right. Yep, it is. Weird.

By the way, these are the same brochures on their web site, but not everyone might have noticed they have the new ones there, so I'm posting them here where more folks might notice it.

[NW Cat Owner]

17A trailer

[NW Cat Owner]

17b trailer

[techfan]

Hmmm… the new 17 brochure listed here has our 15 in the lower picture taken at Great Sand Dunes National Park. We are flattered, but it isn't a 17. I guess those 15's just keep living on even in the lives of the 17's.

Link to new brochure:

http://escapetrailer.com/wp-content/...Escape-17A.pdf

[NW Cat Owner]

21' trailer

[NW Cat Owner]

Originally Posted by techfan

Hmmm… the new 17 brochure listed here has our 15 in the lower picture taken at Great Sand Dunes National Park. We are flattered, but it isn't a 17. I guess those 15's just keep living on even in the lives of the 17's.

I was kind of wondering about that when I looked at it. Now they'll get even more requests to bring that trailer back!

[NW Cat Owner]

19' trailer

[Chris R]

Originally Posted by NW Cat Owner

5.0TA brochure

It looks like the interior photos are from the 5.0 version, not the Ta.

[Donna D.]

Originally Posted by Chris R

It looks like the interior photos are from the 5.0 version, not the Ta.

A couple of weeks ago, I scooped all the brochures off ETIs website and thought I'd put them into the document center. I was actually hoping to get all the classic brochures so we'd have them for the archives. When I saw the new brochures, I saw many instances where the pictures didn't match the brochure, just like you noted. I'll hang on to the PDFs that I have, but I'm not going to upload them until ETI gets them correct with new/better pictures...

[NW Cat Owner]

At least there aren't typo errors! I detest is when a company puts something out with a whole bunch of typos. Don't people know about spell check?

Actually there is one typo in the brochure, plus some formatting errors. Other than the wrong trailer photos. And there's nothing in there that tells you that the trailers you're seeing in the brochures won't be what you'll be getting if you don't already have one on order (and you're getting it before the end of this year).

[float5]

Originally Posted by Donna D.

A couple of weeks ago, I scooped all the brochures off ETIs website and thought I'd put them into the document center. I was actually hoping to get all the classic brochures so we'd have them for the archives. When I saw the new brochures, I saw many instances where the pictures didn't match the brochure, just like you noted. I'll hang on to the PDFs that I have, but I'm not going to upload them until ETI gets them correct with new/better pictures...

I wonder if we have even earlier information on each model. For instance, the black tank on 19's used to be 14 gal. and then was changed to 19 gal. about 2012. (And 19' tanks changed yet again.) People listing their trailers for sale would look up and use the 19 not knowing that it was 14, and there were other such changes year to year. Too bad they did not keep a comprehensive list of all of the many changes they have been making over the years. Or if there is one, I have never seen it.

[NW Cat Owner]

Originally Posted by float5

Too bad they did not keep a comprehensive list of all of the many changes they have been making over the years. Or if there is one, I have never seen it.

I've seen this complaint about many other companies that don't have historical facts on their web site. It's a great reference for their customers and/or collectors, but I guess they don't want to spend the time doing so. Or they don't feel they need to. Or they don't have the information themselves any longer. For companies that do have historical information, it's great fun to look through them to figure out what you have or what you want to search for to add to your collection.

And yeah, information like that would be great for folks trying to sell their stuff. And I'm not talking about just trailers. Anything really.

[Vermilye]

Originally Posted by NW Cat Owner

I've seen this complaint about many other companies that don't have historical facts on their web site. It's a great reference for their customers and/or collectors, but I guess they don't want to spend the time doing so. Or they don't feel they need to. Or they don't have the information themselves any longer. For companies that do have historical information, it's great fun to look through them to figure out what you have or what you want to search for to add to your collection.

And yeah, information like that would be great for folks trying to sell their stuff. And I'm not talking about just trailers. Anything really.

One of the reasons for slow updates on commercial websites is most don't do the site work in house & are charged an update fee each time they make a revision. They tend to wait until all the new info & images are ready and do a one time update.

[NW Cat Owner]

Originally Posted by Vermilye

One of the reasons for slow updates on commercial websites is most don't do the site work in house & are charged an update fee each time they make a revision. They tend to wait until all the new info & images are ready and do a one time update.

I might have completely bought into that theory until I completely revamped my web site last year. I added in a shopping cart feature that took quite some time to put over 2000 items in. Then when I was ready to take it "live" I had my ISP walk me through adding it to Weebly. Then I added in separate pages through Weebly that pertain to the business, such as a page for each type of product, return policy, shows I'm at, stuff like that. It was super, super easy to add those pages in. I do pay for Weebly every year as I have more than the 4 pages (or something like that) that they give you for free.

I think the hardest part of Weebly was picking which colors and layout I wanted to use. That took a long time. I don't know any coding or anything like that and I was still able to create a very nice web site for my business. And I'm not even doing everything I can with it, such as adding video.

Escape's web site, for example, is a fairly simple site, compared to some that are out there. It would be quite easy to put it all in Weebly (or something similar; I'm not familiar with what all is out there - I used them as that's what my ISP supports) and then when they wanted to add something new (such as to the News section) they could add it in a few minutes. Depending on how much they pay for their site, it could be worth it to them to be able to make changes quickly and easily. And without worrying if the other person gets around to it or does it correctly.

[Iowa Dave]

When I went to college in the fall of 1966,'there were strict
Standards for English grading. I failed every in class paper due to spelling and grammatical errors but the instructor recognized the fantastic quality of my thoughts and gave me grades based on everything but spelling. Since then, I have never been critical of typos, spelling etc. I'm looking for the message. My Dad put it more succinctly, People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks, he always said.
Iowa, Honeyman State Park Tonight, Dave

[Donna D.]

The problem with poor spelling and bad grammar is when people don't recognize it. It then becomes self-perpetuating. If you see something that's wrong often enough, you think it's valid and correct. I have zero issues with spelling or grammar on social media, it's when it's published or supposedly a commercial/professional piece that my hair starts on fire.

[NW Cat Owner]

Originally Posted by Donna D.

The problem with poor spelling and bad grammar is when people don't recognize it. It then becomes self-perpetuating. If you see something that's wrong often enough, you think it's valid and correct. I have zero issues with spelling or grammar on social media, it's when it's published or supposedly a commercial/professional piece that my hair starts on fire.

Exactly! You're supposed to be paying for someone to put this thing together and you'd think they would use spell check, but it's so obvious that it's not used all the time. And the person doing the proofing at the business that wants it should also run stuff through a spell checker, if it wasn't done with their proof.

What's kind of sad is when you point out a typo at a business and they just look at you strangely as they don't know it's a typo. Or someone that's trying to be/look professional gets mad at you for pointing them out, especially when they asked you to proof their stuff! (yeah, had that happen to me - lost all respect for her!)

[Brian B-P]

One thing to note about spelling checkers: a simple spelling checker only checks that the word is a word, not that it is a valid word for the context. Unless you have a syntax checker - which is a normal feature of word processing software such as Microsoft Word but not normally found in web browser tools - errors such as the wrong choice among "there", "their", and "they're" will not be caught. This sort of error makes commercial material look very amateurish and obscures the intended meaning, but it is common.

Business communications are still business communications when presented in any of the "social media" systems, all of which market themselves to businesses as methods of communication with customers.