A Grand Collaboration

For the good of your customers and company, staff members in merchandising, marketing and creative must learn to work synergistically.

In my years working with direct marketing clients, I’ve worn all three of these hats. I’ve also directed collaborative efforts from a strategic management position. So I know these three catalog tasks can be done in a collaborative manner — and I know the outcome often is customer delight.

Here’s how you, as a catalog senior manager, can encourage such efforts.

1. First, get everyone in the same room. Doors, walls, cubicles and continual e-mails can unintentionally create silos among your employees. Face-to-face meetings can accelerate learning, resolve issues and encourage empathy.

At the beginning of your catalog production process, bring team members together for a kickoff meeting. Be sure you don’t set a tone of “us vs. them,” but rather one that encourages “all of us for all of our customers.”

2. Assign the teams roles and responsibilities to make the gathering a productive use of each person’s time. Each member of the team has a key role to play in the kickoff meeting.

- Marketing can start by reviewing the basics with the group, such as catalog drop dates, page counts, inserts, promotions and defining what’s different about this mailing vs. last year’s or last season’s.

- Merchants can discuss product news, such as what categories and/or themes they’ll be expanding and contracting and why. They also can touch on what’s new and innovative in the marketplace.

- Your creatives can share their expertise in new copy and layout ideas they’d like to implement with this mailing to create the “wow” factor — that great shopping experience for your customers.

3. Each team should be prepared to discuss sales implications from the last season/mailing. This is a good time to collectively review both top line sales and square inch analysis statistics. They should answer the questions: What are the trends? What are customers telling you by their pocketbook votes?

All three groups should share what they’ve recently learned about your customer base, the competition and the marketplace. They should invite questions from one another. Goal: Get everyone on the same page early in the catalog production process.

4. Ask hard questions. Each group should be prepared to ask this question of its colleagues: “What else do you think we should be doing for our customers?” Sometimes those outside a specific discipline can see things more clearly than those who work in it day after day. This question invites participation from all areas and truly keeps customers front and center.

The other question each group should ask one another: “What can our group (e.g., marketing) do differently to help your group (e.g., merchandising) do its best job?” The answers might be both surprising and helpful. In my experience, many processes were enhanced and streamlined by this simple question. Remember the age-old adage: If something has been done a particular way for many years, that’s a good sign it may need changing. But you won’t know this unless you ask.

5. Make a date — actually two dates. The first date is for the strategy overview/kickoff meeting during which you’ll collectively set timelines and schedules to which everyone on the team can commit. Publish this, along with the names of accountable parties assigned to each key activity. Beware: Don’t offer surprise dates!

The second date is for the hand-off or turnover meeting. (Note: Companies vary on what they call this meeting, but the purpose is to turn over or hand off the products to the creative team.)

6. Meet again, and make it fun. When group members reconvene for the actual handoff or turnover, make it an enjoyable day. And ask for everyone’s help. For example, if it’s a holiday presentation, ask one group of staffers to bring music, another to bring seasonal food and the other to decorate. Devise a creative reference point for the day. Immerse yourself in your merchandise offering.

7. Let staffers be visual and vocal. At the interactive hand-off/turnover meeting, your merchants should be as visual and vocal as possible. Their job is to give the rest of the team a live commercial about the new products they’re planning to sell. Printed item descriptions should accompany every new product, with explanations on why each item is remarkable. Merchants should answer the question: Why was this one chosen instead of a similar product?

Pass the new merchandise around. Engage all team members. What questions arise in the meeting about the products? Those usually are good indications of what might arise for customers as well. Don’t rush this process.

The creative team also needs to be vocal at the meeting. Are there particular issues that make a certain product hard to show on the page or screen? Do creatives need multiple samples of a product?

The marketing team must know what items will be featured in hot spots. How will that positioning affect forecasts? Are there inventory or fulfillment issues that must be addressed?

Discuss all of this upfront, and do your best to keep a running list of each department’s needs. Agree on timetables and specific responsibilities before this meeting ends.

8. Streamline. Have you ever analyzed your proofing and routing processes? Do they still make sense, and if not, why not?

When I did this with a client recently, company officials determined there were outdated reasons for doing tasks the way they did them. With a few changes, they not only simplified the process but were able to give the creative team more designing time.

How can you streamline your present system? Everyone wins with a more relevant and efficient process.

9. Look at the big picture. Once you have a mock-up of the entire proofed catalog, bring team members together to review it. What looks different now that it’s assembled as a whole? Any last tweaks needed?

In many proofing processes, pages are routed independently, and no one takes the time to reassemble the catalog as the customer might see it. Instead, look at the overall impact. Team members should ask themselves: Are the products being shown in their best light? Do the headlines convey enough action? Would your customers be delighted to see this? What will make them place orders?

As Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney, has said: “A brand is a living entity. And it’s enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures.” Check to see one last time before printing your next catalog how all those collaborative gestures of your merchandising, marketing and creative staffers have added up.

Andrea Syverson loves to collaborate with her clients. She’s a creative marketing strategist with more than 18 years of experience in helping companies create powerful products, positions and brands. She is president of IER Partners, a catalog consultancy. She wrote this article at the request of Catalog Success editors. She can be reached at asyverson@ierpartners.com.