Every week, my inbox fills up with marketing emails from outdoor retailers and the brands they carry. They are, for the most part, straightforward promotional messages, focusing on a specific promotion or promotional items. Nau’s emails tend to be different—not surprising for a brand trying to stake out new ground. They are text-heavy, low on the promotion and heavy on the brand story and issues complementary to their brand message of sustainable manufacturing and environmental activism. I seldom read them.
But this week’s Nau email was different. Read the rest of this entry »
Coleman’s new ad campaign makes the tongue-in-cheek case that Coleman invented social networking. It makes a tenuous comparison between online socializing and socializing at a camp site. The campaign fails in a couple ways. Read the rest of this entry »
At first glance, Amazon’s new Kindle electronic book reader doesn’t seem to have much to do with the business of selling outdoor gear. But a recent TechCrunch article touched on an issue we’ve been wrestling with as we develop smarter ways to create dealer catalogs. TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid is skeptical about the future of the Kindle as the killer app for college texts because of major shortcoming: note taking functionality.
But the Kindle’s real weakness is its highlighting and annotation functionality. In a real book, you can mark up your textbook and make notes to yourself in the margins. The Kindle lets you highlight and take notes, but the interface is painful to use with any kind of frequency - E-ink doesn’t lend itself well to quick navigation, nor does the Kindle’s joystick/button interface. From a student’s perspective, the Kindle is badly in need of a touchscreen. And while some students may initially grab the Kindle DX as soon as it comes out for the ‘cool’ factor, practicality (and cost) will rule it out for most of them.
Buyers tell us that the ability to easily mark up a workbook, make notes and sketch out a buy is the best thing about printed dealer workbooks. Until there’s a note-taking technology that makes annotating an electronic workbook as easy as marking up a paper one, electronic-only solutions won’t work for buyers or reps. In reality, the hurtle might be even higher: first we need a technical solution, then we need time for users to get used to it as a medium for note taking. And that could take a while, regardless of where tech takes us.
At some point in every discussion of sales collateral, someone says “Let’s just put it online.” With the current pressure to reduce marketing spending making it even more attractive to move away from printed catalogs, it makes sense to look at the pros and cons of this electronic-only approach to sell-in materials.
The desire to abolish paper catalogs isn’t new. Back in the 90’s, brands were playing with the idea of publishing dealer catalogs on CD. Since then, new technologies have enabled everything from a catalog on a thumb drive to dealer websites. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should. New technologies may add new tools to your marketing tool kit but it’s just as important as ever to make sure that you’re using the right tool for the job. Read the rest of this entry »
