Would you believe that a brochure - just one brochure - can continue to rake in profits for a company year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year? Good heavens, it's over ten years old now and still going strong.

But let's rewind to the beginning. When Mangal Exports (a textile company with a range of readymade home furnishings) approached us, they were desperately seeking a tool to win clients in the USA: 'Give us something, anything that will get us an appointment at least with a purchase manager.'

The agency rolled up its sleeves and got down to working on a solution. A brochure was created. The colours used were subtle, sophisticated and deliberately European. After all, we reasoned, America does look up to Europe when it comes to style. And as for the concept - well, let's just say the clients jumped up when they saw the brochure. 'Where are our products? Why haven't you put any pictures in?' they gasped.

Aha. That was our big idea. Home furnishings are like apparel - within 6 months, styles, prints and colourways are out of fashion. By that reckoning, our brochure too, would be redundant soon. We didn't want that to happen - not after we put so much thought and hard work into it. We persuaded the client to let his brother who was handling the US operations take the call. The brochure was duly e-mailed to him and his response was an enthusiastic, 'This is spot on!' Whew.

We're happy to say that our clients are on first name terms with many purchase managers in the USA now. Sadly, these purchase managers never tire of seeing the same old brochure again and again. The only money we've made from Mangal Exports since is from re-printing larger numbers of copies of the brochure every so often. Okay, we shot ourselves in the foot, so what? It only proves that we're willing to give an arm and / or a leg to make our advertising work harder.