Maybe it's old school, but we love to read the paper in the morning. Reading news on the web is great and timely, but the morning news on a broadsheet is a great way to start the day. Unfortunately for the paper, we rarely read the ads unless there is something unusual about the layout or headline that grabs attention and that brings us to the value of proof.
About a week ago, we saw a very elegant ad for a luxury car. It was over half the page in height, had great placement on the right-hand page, an image of the car and about 4 or 5 sparse lines of copy. Very nice and eye-catchy, so we read the copy, too.
Apparently, the dealer/manufacturer/ad agency responsible for placing this ad did everything right except have the ad proofed. These few lines of copy contained one typo and two grammatical errors. And just like that, the smart quality of the ad (and everyone associated with it) was gone.
In hard economic times like these, the decision to spend thousands of dollars to create and place advertising should always be well thought out and executed to the highest quality. Spend a couple of dollars. Hire a proofer to look over everything you're sending out there. It's a smart move.