Lands' End - Taking On Content (1,379 words)

From a marketer's point of view, explains Susan McIntyre, president of McIntyre Direct, if you're sending out 20 catalogs a year, you'll need to do something to make those efforts stand out—especially at peak mailing times.

That's the monstrous challenge Lands' End (which mailed 211 million catalogs in 1996) has been taking on since the rise of the mature catalog market. What seems to work in this giant's case is the addition of editorial copy that isn't always linked to products or a sales pitch. In fact, the concept's strength depends on the one reason anything gets done at Lands' End: the customer.