How to Waste Your Marketing Dollars

How can you bring a detailed knowledge of your product line and customers to the table, without smothering the creative process with non-negotiable rules? Following are four guidelines that may help.

1. Leave your quirks at the door.

A national manufacturer with a highly respected brand launched a consumer catalog, hired a catalog agency to produce it, but assigned an inside manager to oversee the program. The inside manager was a level-headed businessperson, but he dressed in a quirky way. He didn’t think this was odd; he considered it a point of distinction, a mark of good taste — and he began imposing that taste on the catalog. Soon, every shot in the catalog reflected the manager’s odd style, impairing the catalog’s selling effectiveness.