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Rant and Rave: Privacy in Direct Marketing

$#%^#@*%)! I recently changed to a new phone service provider and within hours of my new phone number being connected, I started receiving sales calls for the “owner of the house.”  Yes, within hours!!!   This is direct marketing on a steroids with a healthy dose of rudeness.  I was not offered any “opt-out” of marketing […]

Where is your Brand from?

Is the location of your business important to your brand message? Are you using it to your advantage? Consider a brand like Starbucks, who made Seattle (where the brand originated) part of their brand story. Need help finding your brand message?  Email our CEO, Lois Brayfield, or call 913-236-2988.

Research That Makes You Say, “Oh, Crap!”

The research stopped me cold. And I seriously thought our team had it right … we didn’t. Let me back up to the beginning. At J.Schmid one of our mantras is that catalogs should DISRUPT, DELIGHT and DRIVE. I’d like to focus on the latter. Catalogs should DRIVE customers or prospects to DO something. In […]

What does Google Know?

Well…literally almost everything. Their search engine has indexed over 30 trillion websites and executes billions of searches each day. “Google” is now used as a verb, joining the ranks of brands-become-eponymous terms like Kleenex, Band-aid and Frisbee. So what can Google teach us about human behavior online? Literally almost anything. Let’s do a thought experiment: […]

Relax The Back Photoshoot

https://youtu.be/5bJL7wL_Y14 Ever wonder what it takes to manage a photo shoot? Take a peek at the Relax the Back photo-shoot for the 2016 catalog. Thanks to the talented Joe Carlson for filming this (www.joecarlsonstudio). And thanks to Jadie Card for her excellent Art Direction! Interested in receiving the catalog? Sign up here: http://buff.ly/1SRIjzr

Honey, Can You Pick Up Some Milk On Your Way Home?

Adding Human Behavior to Traditional RFM Models

Direct marketers are shoppers too. We can learn a lot just from observing ourselves as we make purchasing decisions, appending human behavior to our traditional RFM segmentation.

5 Steps to a Great Call to Action

These Call-To-Action Best Practices Still Stand The Test of Time. Last week I received a magazine subscription offer in the mail that contained no less than 7 paths to respond, including but not limited to the traditional ‘place YES sticker here’ reply postcard, an 800 number and three online response options with separate, but corresponding […]

ARE YOU DENSE? 3 ways to bring clarity to claustrophobic catalogs

ARE YOU DENSE? Well, are you? Pick up your catalog. Flip through the pages. (Go ahead, I’ll just wait here.) What do you see? Do you see a beautifully spaced and paced experience that takes readers on the scenic route through your brand, a leisurely drive through your assortment? Or, do you see dense congestion, […]