 In this article, we’re going to address the creative challenge of writing catalog copy.
Which begs a very simple question: Catalogs??? Wait, wait. What century are we living in? Haven’t catalogs gone the way of their original profitable purveyors, such as Sears and Montgomery Ward? Yes and no. Let us explain. Certainly, you don’t “get a Sears catalog in the mail” anymore. That tradition, which was originally groundbreaking, is going the way of, well, the U.S. Postal Service. “Neither rain, nor snow... but perhaps possibly the internet,” if you take our meaning. But if you think about the genesis of catalogs, you can trace where they came from to where they are now and where they are going, and yes, there is still a need for them—and, thus, copy for them. Think about Sears. They had lots and lots of stuff to sell. So much that they couldn’t really fit in any given Sears store. Plus, any given Sears store only had so much geographic reach. The ingenious solution—to a problem that few perceived as “a problem” at the time—was the mass-mail catalog. It contained literally thousands of items (their slogan was “Sears Has Everything”), and was thick as a phone book, if you’re old enough to remember what those looked like. The more things change... Creating these catalogs was a Herculean effort: not just amassing all of the products, but organizing them, pricing them, working up the copy (descriptions) of each item, the photography, the layout, the printing, and that massive, nationwide mailing. All this cost Sears millions of dollars every year. But talk about ROI. They made it all back, many times over. It was worth the effort. Competitors arose everywhere, spawning what you might call a golden age of catalogs. Here’s something you need to think about, just before we turn the page on this history lesson. It’s how these catalogs were received by consumers. This dates well before the coinage of the phrase “junk mail.” Because the Sears catalog was anything but! Yes. People loved these things. They were like brochures for exotic destinations to drool over. But unlike those dreamy destinations, these were in reach. Prices were affordable. Order something, and it would come right to your house! This is why the special December edition wasn’t known as the “Year-End Catalog,” but rather the “Sears Christmas Wish Book.” How perfect is that? An underlying premise Shopping, you must remember, in the best of circumstances, is fun. Why do you think that grand prizes on TV game shows are often “shopping sprees”? It’s a matter of possibilities, of indulgence, of dreams coming true. Ditto for the ideal catalog. Remember that term: “Wish Book.” It’s the key to this entire exercise. The Sears catalog would intentionally put the reader into a happy place of escape, full of wonderful products that were easy to understand and to visualize... and if you were so motivated, you could order them, right on the spot. Is any of this century-old story sounding surprisingly contemporary? Of course it does. It’s Amazon. Amazon is the Sears catalog of the twenty-first century. The internet didn’t destroy catalogs; it simply changed their form factor. Indeed, today, they’re better. Old Sears catalogs were black-and-white. Text was tiny, and limited to just a few words. There was only one photo of a given item, from one angle only. You know how much that has changed: Color, multiple photos, videos, 3D views, you name it. It costs Amazon millions of dollars a year to maintain this “catalog” of theirs... think they’re making a profit off of that effort? Back into the assignment So now that you know that catalogs aren’t only not dead, but actually thriving, you can approach the catalog-copy assignment with proper perspective and restored vigor. Good catalog copy, in short, puts the reader into a wonderful to-be mindset, in which they envision how much their life has improved with the product or service they’re reading about. That’s universal. And the universality is important here, because the same dictum applies to both B2C and B2B. Yep. We’ve worked on fashion catalog copy and copy for things like software-development services suites, and they both start with the same challenge: Understand what that reader is suffering through right now, and spin this little snippet of copy into a wonderful must-have destination. That’s often not as straightforward as it sounds. Don’t simply start talking about the product. Start, instead, with the problem. The conundrum. The impossibly-high bar. Then reveal the product as the ingenious, indispensable solution. If you’re writing for print (yes, there are actually some printed catalogs getting, well, printed, these days), you’ll need to be mindful of your word-count caps. Online, you have more flexibility. And you really need to understand your audience in terms of not just the problems they face, but the jargon they use, the vocabulary they’re comfortable with. One false note will ring untrue, and you’ll lose them. Similarly, every single catalog entry effectively closes with its own mini call-to-action, which translates to “Buy Now!” Catalog copy can be a daunting challenge, especially when you’ve got a ton of items to catalog. Need help? Contact us. We love helping with assignments like these.
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