What does the new economy have to teach the old one? Is there really a difference between the two?

By Rea Syverson

Sergio Zyman and Scott Miller echo something I’ve been saying for a while: “It’s no different in the world of clicks than in the world of bricks-and-mortar. It’s business. It’s about selling stuff and making money. Brands today and tomorrow will be built the way they were yesterday: They will be built on the basics.” Amen.

So why should catalogers read “Building Brandwidth: Closing the Sale Online?” At first glance it appears Zyman, consultant and former chief marketing officer at Coca Cola, and fellow co-author and business partner Miller wrote this book primarily for the dot-coms.

But “Building Brandwidth: Closing the Sale Online” is an excellent refresher course for all marketers—BAMS (bricks-and-mortars), dot-coms and BAM-dot-coms. In this age of hype, marketing confusion and chaos, multi-channel and single-channel marketers will appreciate Zyman and Miller’s strategic “basics first” approach to brand building. As the authors define it: “E-marketing is everything marketing, and everything communicates.”

Futurist Faith Popcorn recently wrote similar concepts in her book, “EVEolution.” “Everything matters,” she notes. “You can’t hide behind your logo.”

Tom Peters, a brand fanatic, says, “Branding is the only way to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Create a distinct personality, and then tell the world about it any way you can!”

To Zyman and Miller, building brandwidth means building a brand that:

• explains the product or service;
• connects consumers’ wants and needs;
• enhances the value of the product or service and the company from which it comes; and
• distinguishes itself from all competitors and from the consumer sin of not doing anything at all.

And how does all this happen? Zyman and Miller insist the same rules apply again and again to the development, growth and management of brands. They are developed along five key dimensions:

• presence—the way any brand gains consumer awareness and acceptance;
• relevance—the way your brand fits into your customers’ lives and how it meets their needs and desires;
• differentiation—a perception that your brand is unique from all competitors;
• credibility—delivering on the expectations of the brand promise; and
• imagery—four kinds: user (what kind of people use your product), usage (what it feels like to use your product and be associated with your brand), product (direct image of the product and the product in use) and associative (about the company you keep—the brands, individuals, institutions, and events closely identified with your brand).

This book is full of helpful checklists that remind marketers of the basics, which often get lost in the shuffle. All of these can be applied to the planning and creating of catalog strategies. Here are a few:

E-MARKETING CHECKLIST

•Destination: Did you clearly define where this strategy is supposed to take your brand? Have you defined what success will be?
•Objectives: Are your e-marketing objectives clearly linked to your business objectives? Have you zeroed in on just two or three objectives?
•Targets: Have you defined your marketing targets from the inside out, starting with your own employees, your marketing partners, your current customers, your own investors and friendly analysts, other investors and analysts, trade business journalists, market prospects, and those who influence market decisions? The strategy you’ve defined must work for all of these marketing targets.
•Customer Benefit: Have you defined the brand benefit that covers all these audiences? Or have you defined specific benefits by audience group?
•Strategy Tactics: Finally, you get to do the ad (or catalog or spin-off). But you must define 360 degrees of tactics, to surround your targets with an integrated message.

THE CREATIVE BRIEF CHECKLIST

•What is the marketing problem you’re addressing?
•What change could help?
•To whom are you talking? What do you know about them that helps?
•What is the brand positioning—and how can you make it the creative springboard?
•Why should they believe it—that is, what are the rational and emotional benefits?
•How do you close the sale?

THE AD BRIEF CHECKLIST

These are excellent reminders for each copy block.

•The ad has to create awareness for the brand, not just for the ad.
•The ad has to define the product. What’s it for? If it’s a new idea, what’s it like?
•The ad has to define the rational and emotional benefits of the product.
•The ad must help define the user, usage, product and associative imagery of the product.

Zyman and Miller encourage marketers to continually think “destination” as they prepare plans. They write, “The key question in planning is not what we’ve done, but what we will be doing.”

They offer a few more questions for your company:

• Where are you going?
• What must you be in order to succeed—and what must you be in order to survive?
• Where will you fit in the lives of your customers?
• Where will you fit in the market of the future, among all competitors?
• How will you be relevant to customers and differentiated from the competitive set?

One final thought from Zyman and Miller: “As the competitive crowd continues to grow, the e-entrepreneurs will recognize the need for marketing messages that are highly relevant to consumers and clearly differentiated from those of competitors. They are going to look for ways to make sure consumers know exactly who they are, where they fit into their lives and what makes them better than anyone else in the marketplace. They’re going to learn to build brandwidth.”

“Building Brandwidth: Closing the Sale Online,” by Sergio Zyman and Scott Miller, Harper Business, 239 pages, $27.

Create a Catalog That Sells

Jack Schmid, president and founder of J. Schmid & Associates, dedicates a full chapter on establishing your niche, positioning and branding, where he reinforces building basics in his new book. For catalogers, Schmid’s book provides a detailed road map on the entire process, from planning to execution to analysis.

In “Creating a Profitable Catalog: Everything You Need to Know to Create a Catalog That Sells,” Schmid highlights the 10 core competencies that every cataloger needs, and backs up each function with real-life, applicable examples, worksheets and user friendly forms. This book is a textbook for the catalog industry and a helpful cross-training tool for marketers, merchants and creatives.

Schmid covers the following core competencies:

• merchandising;
• niche, positioning and branding;
• the offer or proposition;
• creative execution: design, photography and copy;
• color separations, printing, binding, addressing and mailing;
• new-customer acquisition;
• customer list communication;
• database;
• fulfillment;
• testing, measurement, and analysis.

Schmid also includes the following: an eight-page, four-color inset of catalog creative examples, a complete business plan/feasibility study for a catalog start-up and a comprehensive glossary. Schmid also covers cataloging and the Internet.

For those looking to start a catalog or for bricks-and-mortars looking to enter this channel, this is the new bible of the industry.

“Creating a Profitable Catalog,” by Jack Schmid, NTC Business Books, 239 pages, $49.95.

Andrea Syverson is president of IER Partners, a creative marketing and merchandising consultancy. She may be reached at asyverson@ierpartners.com.