Certain images and certain themes come and go, often very quickly, and if a company latches onto something very specific to one point in time or another, they have a habit of looking dated very quickly.

Look at anything from the eighties and then look at something from the nineties and the difference in colors and themes will be immediately noticeable. A lot of the marketing material made during these periods embraced different aspects of the popular culture, and this certainly applies to letterhead printing as well.

Many companies created letterheads that were entrenched in the popular culture, and so when the culture changed, the letterheads quickly looked dated, which made the companies look outdated as well. Whether or not this is true doesn't really matter, because perception can do quite a bit to decide how a person acts towards a company.

I'm pretty sure that I know what the problem is as well.

Letterheads are part of marketing, yes, but they aren't active marketing at all. Because a company doesn't need to actively do much with them they don't put as much thought to them. This is emphasized by the fact that they will often get such massive orders of letterhead printing, that they can last for a very long time from those first pages done. Even if a company is getting regular printing done they often set up a system to automatically get new letterheads printed when they run out, so they still aren't putting much thought to them.

Slowly but surely time marches on, and as it does the styles change and the popular images change, but the letterhead remains the same. Eventually people start getting letters from this company and they shake their head at the outdated look of the letterhead, which then makes the company appear to be out of touch.

All of this can so easily be avoided by regularly updating your letterhead. Really, going beyond the problem of being outdated, it's just nice to provide people with something new. Active marketing shouldn't be the only thing you're focusing on. Keep a careful eye on all of your marketing and be sure that you have a nice amount of variety in what you're doing.

You never want people getting bored with your marketing, and even though a letterhead isn't the biggest part of marketing, varying it up can still create a good, positive reaction and improve your sales. If you're staying on top of all your other marketing, it won't take you much longer to stay on top of your letterheads as well, and never risk being outdated.