Catalog Doctor: Conquer 'Fear of Selling'
* Myth No. 3: Keep to a strict design formula for brand consistency. Myth No. 3 creates fear of making the catalog look fresh, and locks it into looks that are boring for your customers (or makes them think they've already seen it, so they toss it).
Prescription: Create a branding style guide, but don't make it so rigid that every issue of your catalog looks the same. Create lots of templates. And sometimes break from templates. For example, put a free-form page in a grid catalog, or devote a whole page to one product in a dense catalog. Your logo, style guide fonts and color palettes will lend branding consistency. Your customers will have reasons to read every catalog.
- Companies:
- McIntyre Direct
Susan J. McIntyre is Founder and Chief Strategist of McIntyre Direct, a catalog agency and consultancy in Portland, Oregon offering complete creative, strategic, circulation and production services since 1991. Susan's broad experience with cataloging in multi-channel environments, plus her common-sense, bottom-line approach, have won clients from Vermont Country Store to Nautilus to C.C. Filson. A three-time ECHO award winner, McIntyre has addressed marketers in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, has written and been quoted in publications worldwide, and is a regular columnist for Retail Online Integration magazine and ACMA. She can be reached at 503-286-1400 or susan@mcintyredirect.com.
