Producing a catalog is different from any other promotional project you are likely to undertake. It permits (but does not demand) copious creative flair, combined with meticulous mastery of mountains of minutiae, expertise in a half-dozen technical specializations, financial acumen to match that of a dedicated auditor, the human relations rapport of a soother of egos, and the management skills of a mover of mountains. Few experienced catalog producers claim to be able to juggle all of those at the same time during the actual production of a catalog. If you can possibly avoid trying, neither should you. This article guides you, step by step, through the creation, production, and distribution of a printed catalog. Digitized versions follow analogous creative steps, using much of the same hardware, software, and skills. Your major “creative” decision may well be whether to go from your print version copy to online or vice versa. My suggestion is to do the print version first. It forces you to focus on what is most important; what benefits and features do the real selling.

Then transfer and expand that onto the Internet, where everything you add is a selling bonus. Unlike some of the other articles, it concentrates less on creativity and more on procedures that let your creativity have maximum impact. It tells you how to achieve superior copy and design, nor what to write or draw. It assumes that you are the soother of egos and mover of mountains. If, in addition to that, you could take on additional roles, ask yourself whether you really should. In any major catalog with which we have been involved, just those two functions alone have been a full-time job. Where staff is available, assign what you can and do only what you must. What you must do is assume responsibility for the job as a whole. Management is unlikely to accept as an excuse or explanation that you were too swamped with detail to supervise. No matter how much better you could do it than the person assigned to the details . . . don’t! Your function is to manage. Do it!

DECIDING ON GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS Management In most organizations that use a catalog, its budget and overall purpose must have management approval. Automobile dealers and department stores, as well as other retail outlets that have a sales force, are in a different position from vitamin manufacturers, food-of-the-month clubs, and giftware importers that sell only by mail and/or the Internet. What is the purpose of the gift catalog issued by your local art museum? Very much like a magazine competing for readers’ interest and subscription dollars, the “mission” of each of these catalogs must be defined at the highest level and then produced with that goal in mind.

Marketing Marketing is the overall activity that encompasses the creation and production of your company’s product or service, its pricing, its product/service distribution, and its promotion. Advertising, including the production of catalogs, is only one— albeit important—part of the total marketing mission, which, like the management mission, must be incorporated into your decisions relating to the catalog. The function of the catalog in the sales plan is of vital importance. That is, is it business-to-business or consumer, traffic-building, mail order, or, if some of each, how much? It must be defined in writing, to avoid later “retroactive omniscience.”

Editorial Matters Someone must have final approval over the technical accuracy of the features and benefits presented in the catalog—that is, over what is said rather than how it is said. The exact authority of this person and who, if anyone, can override it, must be defined in writing.

Legal Matters The law is quite clear. You are responsible for anything you claim, promise, and generally say in your catalog and other promotions. Other laws specify how fast you must ship paid or charge orders, or get customer approval for delay. Get legal clearance while the catalog is still in its manuscript stage, not when it is printed and ready to mail! Learn and keep up-to-date on the rules through your direct marketing club and association news. Copy Copy is the preparation of every word of the manuscript, no matter who writes it. Assign specific responsibilities for information on ordering and your policy on returns, as well as for product descriptions—for the nuts and bolts as well as for the glamour.

Design Design is a rendering of the visual impression given by the catalog. The design concept may be presented for approval in rough form or with as much detail and finish as the designer wishes. In either case, it must be finished enough to show how the major elements that make up the catalog merge into a synergetic whole. Among those elements are the catalog’s covers, type, descriptions, illustrations, ordering information, and outer envelope; if one is used.

Layout Layout is a detailed rendering of how each page of the catalog and every other element of the catalog package reflect the design concept. The layout may be prepared by the designer, but it is frequently done by a specialist in turning design into a practical blueprint for writers, typesetters, artists, and photographers. Approval of the layout—not the design—is the signal for the start of the physical production of the catalog.

Production Everything begins with agreement on a production schedule. This schedule is controlled by the approval process, which follows in the next section, and how that process fits into the catalog checklist. The process and checklist may differ from what is suggested here, but both are needed and best put into writing.

A SYSTEM FOR INTERNAL APPROVALS The approval process is unique to each organization. Fight, if you must, to organize and limit the number of approvals required. Nothing is as frustrating as waiting for approvals from managers who assign deadlines and then do not find time to meet them themselves. The approval steps in creating and producing the catalog constitute a process rather than a specific number of persons. Whether you do it all yourself or have a staff, the procedure is the same. No matter how large the staff, the project manager should be the person with the most advertising expertise. Assign this function first, to let that person play a key role in filling the other slots.

PRODUCING YOUR CATALOG The production of a catalog involves three sets of activities:

1. Preproduction activities

2. Physical production of the catalog

3. Postproduction activities

Preproduction Activities Probably the single most important preproduction decision is agreement on the dare when the catalog must be ready to mail or otherwise be distributed. Every other decision will be driven by that date and the inflexibility of the printing and distribution schedules. Meetings The number of meetings required for producing a catalog—or for any other promotional project—depends on the role of advertising and the degree of independence assigned to advertising by management and sales. In most organizations, this is management’s decision to make. It reflects the importance of the project, the specifics of the sales message, the amount of time available for their supervision, and, probably most important, the degree of autonomy earned by the promotion department through its own performance.

Approvals A number of signed approvals are almost always required to start production of the catalog. These include the approvals of management, finance (the budget OK), marketing, sales, and advertising. Other departmental OKs may be involved later on and are designated when the catalog is first discussed.

First General Meeting Call an initial meeting of all interested parties, including the in-house design, print production, and editorial departments if they exist in your organization.

In the memorandum calling for the meeting, specify what is to be discussed and the decisions required, together with a brief outline of data that will help in making the decisions. The meeting should cover at least the following subjects:

• Budget. Give the cost of the entire project. Show costs for the most recent similar catalog. Outline reasons why the cost of the new one may be higher, lower, or the same.

• Objective. Will the catalog be used for direct sales, by a sales staff, for convention and meeting distribution, for public relations aimed at employees, stockholders, and so on? Other? If more than one of these, rate their level of importance as a percentage.

• Theme. Get agreement on the overall sales or marketing themes the catalog must reflect and their order of importance. For instance: Contemporary . . . New . . . Updated . . . Safe . . . Faster . . . Cheaper . . . More personal online help . . . Single source . . . and so on. This is not an attempt to coin a slogan but to get direction.

• Physical specifications. Specify any general or special considerations that must be followed. Among the possibilities are fewer or more products to be shown, modification of the physical size of the catalog to permit its broader use, and the inclusion of more or fewer order forms or enclosures.

• Due date. Set the date of the first use of the catalog. Answer the following questions: What use? Where? When? How many?

• Mail date. Set the date when catalog is to be received (rather than sent out).

• Special instructions. Get specific instructions from management, marketing, and sales for items not already covered. Make sure to differentiate between instructions and suggestions. Get the instructions in writing.

• Approval process. Determine who must see and approve the items covered on the catalog checklist if this is not already established procedure. In what order? Who has final sign-off? Budgeting You will be starting on either a new creative effort or a revision of an existing catalog. Where only minor revisions are needed, such as updating prices and getting a new cover design, a budget is easy to specify. Even when a major new creative effort is called for, a budget can be estimated. Where similar work was done dur ing the past three years, use that figure, adding 5 percent per year for inflation, except for postage. Get exact current postal rates and use that amount. Where no comparable recent costs are available, ask likely suppliers to give you “ballpark” estimates.

Add 5 percent to those, too. Present both options at the first meeting. Management appreciates—and rewards— that kind of foresight! Objective If your catalog is to be available on the Internet, do you have the internal knowhow to produce—or even supervise—that version and to handle the response? As this is written, few consumer online catalogs are profitable, though many are successful in distributing product and service information. How important is it for you to be there? How much are you willing to invest in learning the medium? See Article 11 for more. Theme One of the major purposes of the initial meeting is to come to agreement on a theme for the catalog, though not on how the theme is to be implemented. The latter is the responsibility of the advertising people. Every catalog has a theme—that is, it conveys a message to its recipients, whether or not its sender intended to put that message into its pages or web site. The theme can range from “We are better at what we do than anyone else” to “We don’t know what we’re doing” . . . from “Nobody beats our service!” to “Service? Beat it!” Obviously, some of these themes are implicit rather than explicit and not what the producer deliberately planned. Some theme is going to be there, so be sure it conveys what you want to say. Do not permit its accidental creation by inattention to any detail! Physical Specifications The concerns of senior management with the details of physical specification are likely to reflect the importance of the catalog in the marketing plan. The more critical the catalog is to sales, the more intense will be the pressure for direct involvement from the sales department. Unlike some of our colleagues in advertising, we try very hard to not find that frustrating. As we point out to our advertising associates: “If sales doesn’t sell . . . nobody gets paid.”

The salespeople may actually know something that can help. Ask them, and see how quickly they change from inter-departmental adversaries to cooperative friends! Other Considerations The other four subjects—due date, mail date, special instructions, and the approval process—are likely to be routine. They are covered at the initial meeting to make certain that the advertising people can proceed without getting caught in unforeseen booby traps, for example, an earlier than expected due date, special instructions you didn’t get because you didn’t ask, or a new link in the approval chain that you “should” have known about.

The Approval Ladder Only one person (please, not a committee) can have final authority for any aspect of the production of a catalog. If your organizational meeting does nothing else, have it create an approval ladder to determine who must approve each step and who must resolve or dictate solutions to conflicts. In multilevel organizations, keep senior managers out of these conflicts. That’s why the rest of us are around. Do, however, keep senior managers informed—not about the problems but about their solutions!