Creative

In a session during last week’s NEMOA conference in Portland, Maine, Lois Boyle, president/chief creative officer at catalog consulting firm J. Schmid & Assocs., said that the customer experience is the key factor in developing a successful catalog company. Stressing that in today’s world you’re more in competition with consumers’ time than with their pocketbooks, Boyle provided a few ways to help your catalog break through the clutter of everyday life. Included below are four of those tips: 1. Develop a schemata (customer’s frame of reference). Calling it the “curse of knowledge,” Boyle said that many catalogers know too much. “We get so close

Lillian Vernon, a Virginia Beach, Va.-based cataloger and online retailer specializing in household, organizational, children’s and fashion accessory products, has gone back to its roots in search of future success. The company’s catalog has reverted to its more unique dimensions, 8 inches by 8 inches, after a four-year departure. The 56-year-old multichannel merchant first introduced the square format in 1986, but in recent years had been using the more common 8 inches by 10 inches format. “It was such a well-known format for the core book that we wanted to return to it,” says Vice President of Marketing John Buleza. “It’s kind of in

Bluewater Books & Charts is a 104-page consumer catalog that offers navigational charts, instruments and gifts to the nautical community. In addition to the catalog, the company operates two retail stores and, of course, a Web site. I suspect this catalog markets to high-income shoppers willing to spend a great deal of money on their hobby-based lifestyle, and Bluewater needs to capitalize on this with a design that’ll make sailing enthusiasts want to part with their dollars. But the Bluewater catalog is as predictable as a nautical chart in its careful organization. Let’s look at some specific problems as well as some creative solutions that

Remember those old TV announcements, “It’s 10 p.m., do you know where your children are?” Those have come to mind lately as my son Marc, 17, enters his senior year in high school. He, my wife and I have hit the ground running searching for colleges. Like any parent, to me it seems like he grew up practically overnight. But it’s the college search thing that’s really hit home with me lately — namely, that a generation has passed. This column isn’t about him; it’s actually about my generation. See, my thought process seems to naturally flow from this, “Wow, you’re growing up; you’re

Well into the second decade of the Internet, many of you reading this — if not all of you — have a pretty good recollection of the “Wild Wild West” days of the Internet early on. It actually still is the Wild West, but in a much different way. And, having sat in on a number of sessions at the e-Tail conference in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, I noticed the breadth of knowledge that’s permeated the catalog/multichannel community and helped give it an entirely different character than it had 10 years ago. For one, consider how the language has changed. In the mid-’90s, I

One of the most powerful connectors between a seller and a prospect is language, or voice. Of course, it’s the writer’s job to get that communication across in words and ensure that it’s culturally accurate. To speak (write) to your customers and prospects the way they wish to be spoken to can be daunting when you’re not exactly like them — but it’s far from impossible. It just takes a little research. Most of us can tell if someone’s not “speaking our language.” We hate to be spoken down to. This is true both face-to-face and in your catalog. Yet, I constantly see curt and

Problem: The Strasburg Children catalog wanted to improve the quality of its photographs. Solution: It hired an outside photography studio. Results: Strasburg Children has seen a 400 percent increase in catalog requests via phone and online. It’s also experienced an increase in Web sales and store traffic. Strasburg Children, a multichannel marketer of high-end children’s clothing, knew it had quality products, but company officials felt its photography didn’t show off the intricate detail and delicate beauty of its clothing. Strasburg Children has gone from four stores to almost 100. But according to Marketing Manager Amy Hough, “One of the things that failed to evolve with our growth was

Last week, I got an e-mail from a former student of mine telling me he was starting a company with mail order as one of its distribution channels. He had a neat idea, and I thought the items he was about to sell had merit. Clearly he had his product line thought out well.

It pleases me to no end when this happens: a budding entrepreneur, about to stake his claim in the business world. Then I get the question that I dread: “How do I buy a list so I can grow the business?” How do I buy a list? Oh man, haven’t I

For some reason, I often feel the need to reflect back on my past experience in the catalog/multichannel business when I write these things. Is that typical for these kinds of columns and newsletters? Or at 47, am I just gettin’ old? Hopefully the former, because here I go again. These days, it seems like more and more “rules” of cataloging must be changed for myriad reasons: to account for unfair postal rates, to cater to consumers’ reduced attention spans and to accommodate catalogers’ increased reliance on other marketing channels, namely the Web and retail for consumer marketers and the Web, distribution advancements, telemarketing and

As has been its annual custom, B-to-B list firm MeritDirect’s annual co-op event in White Plains, N.Y. on July 12 was kicked off by a provocative and entertaining presentation by catalog veteran and futurist Don Libey. Having heard Don speak plenty of times in the past (and despite his frequent speaking appearances, rarely does he repeat a single concept, strategy or idea), I’ve long since learned how to filter through his motivational pep talk and the meat of what he delivers. While always entertaining, his shtick is always chockfull of meat, but it often looks beyond tomorrow. And after all, we all want to