10 CATALOGUE FUTURES Are your catalogues
By James L. Clarke, Brand, DM & Copy Consultant, TA Design
clear?
Or rather, are your catalogues still clear to your customers, despite the extra messages they should now be carrying?
Te catalogue, virtually dismissed a few years ago in some quarters, has proved a much hardier animal than predicted. Perceptive practitioners continue to value the proven virtues of the catalogue – whilst happily accepting new channels as additional strings to their bow. New digital channels have arrived and been through their
‘honeymoon’ phase, after which their strengths and limits have become better understood. Following the inevitable period of juggling, testing and evaluating how best to integrate the new mix (with an individual result for every business) things are beginning to settle down again. One consequence of this has been a new appreciation of the
humble catalogue and what it – and sometimes only it – can do. And this has led to forward-thinking marketers asking their
catalogues (and therefore their agencies) to do more; leading to the phenomenon of the ‘multi-message’ catalogue. A catalogue that has more – and more diverse – messages than simply the formulaic ‘product pic / product patch / SKU’ approach (although there’s still a surprising amount of the latter around).
Deciding the priorities for your catalogue
How ‘multi-message’ is your catalogue? How many messages would you like to add to it? Which are the most important for you? How much space resource does each message require? What
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imagery, copy and graphic should it have? What colours, type size and amount of space? What position and prominence on the page? It’s never a simple proposition. One can make quick decisions
about any of these elements, but that’s not the same as making the correct decision. Especially when the decision to make element A bigger, means element B must be smaller. With a finite paper area, it’s a zero sum game. It’s not like
cooking – where adding more red peppers doesn’t mean you have to take out one of the chunks of lamb (or tofu).
The dangers of over-egging the pudding
Tis finite paper area can lead to the urge to pile things on, and squeeze things up. While in some market sectors this is a successful way to go – in many sectors, a tipping point is reached where adding any more elements to the pages can devalue and damage the brand, products and sales. So adding more messages is a fine art for the marketer. For
example, the first over-packed catalogue might increase sales – but hidden, longer-term damage might be occurring – prospects who decide against becoming a customer, and customers who switch to better-looking competitor catalogues that sell similar products but don’t try too hard. A few examples illustrate the kinds of approaches marketers
can adopt to make the most of their catalogues:
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