The Rebirth of Cataloging
by Don Libey

At this beginning of a new year, we observe another turn of the wheel of the seasons and yet another rebirth of the catalog industry. As one year closes and another begins, we continue to be amazed by the ever-continuing evolution of this vast direct marketing industry and by the ever-resilient and familiar entity known as the catalog.

Why Does the Catalog Work So Well?

Order. Humans require order. Set us down in the center of chaos and we immediately begin to create order. It’s what we do—almost exclusively. If you examine a successful catalog, you find that it is, essentially, an array of useful products presented in an orderly manner. The classic, successful business-to-business catalogs are monuments of studied, unchanging order, i.e., Seton or NEBS or ULINE. These catalogs work because complex information has been displayed and described in a tight protocol that infallibly orders the information and makes it accessible and understandable. Take away the protocol of order that governs these catalog paragons and their level of success would not be as assured.

A fundamental secret of the catalog master, especially as it relates to pagination and layout, is the uncompromising requirement for an ordered protocol of product presentation. Many of today’s beginning catalog merchandisers and creative designers have no knowledge of copy protocols, typography protocols, photography protocols, styling protocols, pricing protocols, or any of the other strict, descriptive protocols that were written to cover every eventuality of every element of catalog creativity, and thereby assuring absolute order. Each of these necessary protocols is narrative descriptions of what is allowed and what is not allowed and how it is to be presented. Catalog protocols are to cataloging what patent papers are to the U.S. Patent Office. And they are especially important in an era of integrated operating systems that delight in creating chaos out of order at the slightest deviation from proper formatting and execution.

It is important to recognize that this state of pure order is not for the benefit of the catalog company or the catalog owner; it is purely for the benefit of the customer. Customers respond to both order and chaos. To order they respond positively and predictably; to chaos they respond negatively and predictably. The masters know this and also know the elements of the catalog presentation that must be harnessed and brought under a rigid ordering. Once the inherent order of a catalog is discovered, it takes on what is almost an immortality of its own; again, consider the timeless “order” of a Seton or a NEBS catalog. And that’s why catalogs work so well.

The Three Questions Allowed By Order

There are only three questions that people holding a catalog have in their minds:

1. I wonder what’s new?;
2. Where is it?;
3. How much does it cost?

Provide answers to those three questions and you have met nearly 100 percent of the catalog shopping demand. To understand the power of this dynamic, consider the comparable three questions in the mind of a retail consumer who arrives at a shopping mall:

1. I wonder if they’re open?;
2. I wonder if they have what I want?;
3. I wonder if I can find a parking place close to the entrance?

These are significant questions that point to why one commercial media is superior to another.

The questions in the mind of the catalog buyer have not changed in many years. It is inherently human to wonder what is new; that is the base curiosity that causes us to respond in predictable ways. Of the three questions to be satisfied in order to drive a sale, the newness question is the most important of the three. If a cataloger can only posit one question in the buyer’s mind, it must be related to “what’s new?” Only when that question is adequately dangled do the second and third questions—“where” and “how much” – form. Again, observe and marvel at the dictates of order and an order-seeking society.

And if the newness question is the most significant in creating curiosity, then the business-to-business cataloger must present a minimum of 35 percent new products in every catalog cycle to sustain that curiosity. A consumer cataloger must offer anywhere from 35 percent to 100 percent depending on seasonality and market focus. Within the human quest for order lies a human quest for newness and change. Understanding those two primal motivations of the Consumerus Americanus constitutes the foundation of catalog industry mastery.

The Questions and the Channel

Picture the cover of your catalog and ask yourself the three questions. You can immediately see the need for clues, answers, guides and visual stimuli on the cover of the catalog. Now, picture the Web in your mind and ask the same three questions. What is conjured up, now? Or, picture a telephone. Hear it ring and imagine answering it. Ask the three questions now. What do you see in your mind’s eye regarding this channel? Three channels. Three images of behavior. Three identical questions. But a multitude of different responses, stimuli and solutions.

Here is the point: we have become multi-channel marketers, but we have not become multi-channel behaviorists. Most of us are still forcing our old concepts of direct marketing behavior on alternative channels. We want the channels to bend and meet our old expectations. It won’t work. And in order for a multi-channel marketing position to work properly, we will have to once again give rebirth to direct marketing.

Ordering the Channels

Up until the holiday season of 2002, most of what had been taking place relative to the consumer and the Internet over the past 10 years had been preparatory ordering. Finally, in 2002, the body consumer reached the point of a necessary critical mass of order and achieved a critical mass of confidence in on-line purchasing. Everything up to this point had been the creation of sufficient order to drive consumer confidence. And it happened in 2002. On-line shopping grew by magnitudes. And next year it will grow magnitudes again. It is now trusted by more people than those who do not trust the channel.

Smart direct marketers have just completed a period of ordering in a multi-channel environment. They have mastered the cataloging answers to the three questions and have that channel firmly in place. They have, where appropriate, mastered the telephony channel, either outbound or inbound, or both, and have that channel firmly in hand. And they have spent 8 to 10 accelerating years learning the inherent order of the Internet channel and have reached a point of common-sense order that now allows a fully integrated channel addition to the marketing arsenal (read: profitable). We are now poised for a rebirth.

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