Matthew Fey, Creative Director
You’ve all heard the doomsayers. The plaintive wails of prognosticators, tolling the bell for our beloved medium. They shout:
The end is nigh!
Catalogs are obsolete!
Print is dead!
Might as well call it a day then. Time to find a new line of work. Pulp all your print catalogs to line your hamster cages. (that’s a lot of hamsters) Let’s just give up. No one looks at catalogs. Everyone’s moved onto the Next Big Thing. Heck, we’re a few scant technological inventions away from the mental violation of product ads beamed straight into our brains.
How can the catalog – the dinosaur of direct marketing – survive in the face of meteoric extinction?
Simple. I propose to you that we need to shock the paradigm, to alter the metaphor. The catalog resembles not those plodding, tiny-brained, lumbering lizards, but instead matches the nimble mammal. Think of catalogs as the resilient survivor, adapting to its surroundings. Surviving. Evolving.
Don’t relegate your catalog to extinction. Embrace technology. Welcome change. Don’t bemoan what your catalog can’t do. Create what it can become.
It’s not the end of catalogs as we know it. We’re just getting started.
All it takes is New Thinking.
Tags: catalog, catalogs