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Libey Incorporated
Economic Outlook
Secrets of the Catalog Master
Vol. MMVII No. 7 January 2007
(Continued--page 3)
Kevin Hillstrom
A Beautiful Mind
First: full disclosure. I am Kevin Hillstrom’s book publisher. His first book, Hillstrom’s Database Marketing: A Master’s Complete Method for Success, was published in 2006 by Direct Academy, an imprint of Campbell & Lewis Publishers, of which I am the proprietor. His second book will be released in the summer of 2007.
Second: his mind. As you may imagine, I have met many people in my years in direct marketing; some brilliant, some not. Kevin Hillstrom is the most remarkable mind I have ever encountered in this profession. That is why I wanted to publish his books. He deserves to be heard. His mind produces important questions and ideas. He is a change-agent; an observer and synthesizer. A mind like Kevin’s comes along only rarely and it is worthy of notice.
Third: his knowledge. He is a true Master of database knowledge; unusually gifted and highly talented with nearly twenty years of heavy-duty direct marketing and catalog company experience. If he was a surgeon, he would be leading teams of advanced transplant surgeons doing important, life-saving work among the needy of the world. He tempers his knowledge with his humanity, and that is a rare thing. He is a direct marketing teacher and a direct marketing futurist. He knows and sees what is going to occur and he will be right 8 times out of ten. That’s batting 800; Hall of Fame quality.
vFourth: his writing. He writes better than anyone I know in this industry. His writing is clean, spare and direct. He actually has something to say and says it with substance. And what he writes about are important things for the serious practitioner of direct and database marketing. He makes the ordinary extraordinary. He makes the complex understandable. He teaches in writing. He is a regular columnist for DMNews.
Fifth: his blog. Kevin has created one of the most read blogs in all of direct marketing. You can become a regular participant at www.minethatdata.blogspot.com. He wishes to have interaction; he encourages differing views; he has a following of other brilliant people who contribute. The blog is a master’s course in database concepts. Read it for six months and you will have the equivalent of an advanced degree from some of the best content available anywhere.
Sixth: his concepts. He thinks differently. He sees things differently. His vision is fresh and vibrant. His conception of the future of direct marketing is sustaining and intelligent. He is a conceptual leader with an important future in our industry.
Seventh: his sharing. He shares his knowledge. He offers it freely. If he chooses to become a consultant one day, he will be in constant demand by the extraordinary companies who value knowledge and intelligence and understand what a talent like Kevin’s can do for their future growth and success.
For these reasons, Kevin Hillstrom is someone you should know and read.
A Small Thing
The Little ‘Moments of Truth’ are what should be attended to
Last month, in my purchasing of Winter Solstice gifts for a few close friends, I experienced several ‘moments of truth’ that were either successful or a failure for the merchants I selected.
An online purchase was made for a gourmet mushroom selection of four varieties of hand-picked, fresh mushrooms. Now, these were not dried mushrooms, rather big mushrooms picked in the last two days and whisked to the lucky recipient via FedEx from the mountains of the northwest. We’re talking about $200 worth of very special mushrooms.
I filled the shopping cart and proceeded to checkout. My credit card was processed and charged. The shipping address was entered and a gift card was written. The merchant asked me if I wanted them to send an email to the recipient giving them the day the shipment would arrive and notifying them of the perishable nature of the gift so that arrangements could be made for a successful receipt of the package. Of course, I followed their suggestion and an email was immediately sent with a copy found within seconds in my in-box. That unique gift was complete and would be the perfect gift for my gourmet-food-loving relative to whom it was going.
Two days later, I received an email informing me that the mushroom selection gift package was not only out of stock, but out of season. Then why is it listed on your gift-giving suggestions online in December? Moment of truth. Failed. Plus, now I had to send an email saying disregard my email telling you about a great gift that was now supposed to be there today. Bottom line, I look like a fool and the mushroom vendor is clearly inept.
And then I remembered my friend, the owner of JR Mushrooms and Specialties, www.jrmushroomsandspecialties.com. I go online and there are not only mushrooms of every conceivable variety, but white and black truffles and truffle oil. A selection was made, ordered, paid for and shipped within hours. And my friend emailed me and said, “I saw your order come through and I took it to the post office personally and sent it Priority Mail. It will be there in three days.” Wow! Moment of Truth. Success!
It’s all about the small things.
One Thing
I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. What I do instead is to find one thing I will do in the next year that needs to be done. This is a full-year project. I don’t do little stuff. I do big stuff. Last year I needed to lose 70 pounds and I did it (the fact that I need to lose 140 more is a project for some other year). This year, I am focusing on building a serious blog site to aggregate my universe of direct marketing contacts. But, that is not the point. The point is: What are you going to do this year that is important and necessary—one thing?
If we don’t have these repetitive ‘One Things’ year after year, we wind up not doing one thing each year: improving. We stagnate.
Try this small experiment. Take a half sheet of paper and write down five things you know you should do. These are not the ‘nice-to-dos,’ these are the ‘have-to-dos.’ Now, rank them in importance. Whatever comes up number one is what you should focus all of your One Thing effort on in 2007. The key to success is choosing things that are vitally important and getting them logically ranked. These can be business or personal things; the only thing that matters is that you identify one thing and that you accomplish one thing. Twenty years of ‘One Things’ is a lifetime of accomplishments.
Typography
We are in danger of losing our knowledge about the importance of typography in an Arial dominated online world. Here are some fundamentals that create not only better catalogs, but better communications.
Typesetting is not typography; typography is the art of design using type. Typesetting is key-stroking. Many art directors and designers are essentially typesetting because they no longer have the subtle knowledge of type use that has emerged from thirty-five centuries of typographic evolution.
There are eight classifications of fonts: 1) Serif; 2) Sans Serif; 3) Display; 4) Glyphic; 5) Monospaced; 6) Script; 7) Blackletter or Gothic; 8) Symbols and ornamental. Those fonts that direct marketers are generally concerned with are Serif, Sans Serif and Display.
Serif Fonts
Serif fonts have cross-lines at the head and feet of the type strokes. These are brought forward from stone carving in the Roman era. These fonts are also referred to as Roman fonts.
Serif fonts are further categorized into five types: 1) Venetian Oldstyle; 2) Geralde Oldstyle; 3) Transitional; 4) Modern; 5) Slab serif. Most of our present day typography is concerned with Modern and Transitional divisions of serif type.
Typography has a primary responsibility to make type readable and legible. In the world of typographic design, Serif or Roman type has always had the edge in reading comprehension. We learn to read through books, newspapers and magazines and these are, by and large, set in Roman fonts having feet or serifs. Serifs aid horizontal eye movement; Sans Serif fonts are harder to read.
Sans Serif Fonts
Sans Serif, or type without feet or serifs, was first introduced in the late 1800s. Sans Serif is further classified into three divisions: 1) Grotesques; 2) Geometric; 3) Humanist. Most of our Sans Serif fonts tend to be from the Grotesques, a term that was applied to the fonts when they were first created because they were felt to be ugly.
Sans Serif is more difficult to read; the eye tends to skip parts of the words, thereby diminishing comprehension. For this reason, publishers rarely set book interiors in Sans Serif fonts. Oddly, many catalogers do use Sans Serif believing it to be cleaner and more ‘modern.’ Comprehension and readability are, however, diminished when this decision is made. If you want a passionate debate, raise this issue with a Sans Serif designer and watch out for the explosion, sparks and fire. But, the fact is that over 100 years of testing has proven—time and time again—that Serif or Roman type enhances comprehension. Do you want to sell stuff or look cool?
Display Fonts
These are the specialty type fonts that are essentially illegible as text fonts. When used within the constructs of good design, these can be wonderfully enhancing to a catalog design. When used excessively or as a ‘jumbled bag’ of type, a catalog can look insipid and amateurish. It takes an excellent typographic designer to handle display type well in a catalog typography protocol.
Type Size
The typographer has another element that contributes to readability and legibility: point size. Ten-point type is thought to be the smallest legible type. This newsletter is set in 12-point Times New Roman. When it is set in 11-point, I receive comments on its being too small to read easily. Part of the reason is the design of the newsletter and the intended reading experience. Over the years, I have found that this newsletter is taken on trips, taken home, or otherwise reserved for a straight-through, concentrated reading session. The columns are dense and there is a lot of reading. This is not ‘sound bites’ design; this is meat and potatoes. So, because it is a long slog, the type has to be larger and 12-point is logical—like a book.
Over the years, I have done hundreds of catalog critiques. The most common problem has been Sans Serif type fonts and 8 or 9 point type. That’s a recipe for near-total illegibility. The usual reason is to control page count, and that is truly being penny wise and pound foolish. If you can’t afford sufficient pages to get your product message across in a legible and easily readable manner, why are you in the catalog business? You might as well build a billboard in your basement or open a retail store with no door.
Letter Spacing
This element is all about the choice of font within the style of types. Times New Roman has a different letter spacing than Baskerville Old Face or Garamond or Book Antiqua. It takes more space for the latter than for the former to print the same content.
The mastery of letter spacing goes to the art and knowledge of the myriad typefaces available to the designer. Understanding the subtleties of kerning and ligatures lies in the mastery of the art. Kerning alters space between characters; ligatures are conjoined characters; tracking alters letter spacing on the paragraph level. Spacing must be in proportion to the letterforms. All capitals are difficult to read and create a new set of spacing demands.
Word Spacing
Word spacing refers to the quality of the space between words. It must be set to be just enough to preserve the integrity of the line while promoting maximum readability and legibility. Word spacing should be almost invisible. With the prevalence of Word as the typesetting medium, we often see bizarre word spacing, especially in narrow lines. Word spacing is not unlike bricklaying. There is a horizontal space between the bricks that is taken up by the mortar. That space is what we find with word spacing. Much of the spacing is determined by the justification. This newsletter is justified left and right and forces the space between the words in order to have even justified lines. Ragged right justification offers more freedom for word spacing.
Leading
The vertical space between lines is known as leading after the thin sheets of lead that used to be inserted between each row of hand-set type. This is similar to the mortar in bricks vertically between each course of bricks. The less distance between lines, the less comprehension; too much space also lowers comprehension. Leading requires an ideal that is maintained uniformly throughout the catalog.
Line Spacing
Text should contain no more or less than 40 to 50 characters per line for maximum legibility. In some instances, two columns are better than one long line. Again, the knowledge and experience with individual type fonts is essential as each one requires a very different optimal line length and spacing.
Inherent Legibility
Type that is in italics is less legible and readable than roman type. Italics should be avoided and used only for emphasis or as required under standard style manual usage. Shaded, outline and inline type faces are difficult to read and should be avoided. Reversed type (white out of gray) is detrimental to comprehension.
Good Typography
Good typography is never noticed. That is why it is good. Good typography reduces the effort of reading as much as possible. As a result, it encourages the reading of the page, as well as understanding. Catalog readers respond to consistent typography protocols and consistent page elements. The idea is not to dazzle the reader with design, rather to understate the design in favor of maximum readability and legibility.
In recent years, we have seen the loss of much of this knowledge and these artful elements of typography, especially as economics drive design decisions. But, once again, the purpose is to sell—legibly.
Knowing . . . Really Knowing
Here it was again: senior executives sitting around the conference room table—guessing. Quietly, in my head, the question repeats yet again: ‘Why don’t these people know what is going on?’
Twenty years ago we needed to know 20 things to be successful, 20 cardinal measurements. Ten years ago, the number had risen to 100 things; today, it is many hundreds of measurements. Yet, I often can’t get those first 20 things that should have been being measured 20 years ago.
Everybody has a different way of measuring. The interpretations are all different. Worse, the belief about the health of the measurements is all over the place. The CFO and the VP Marketing and the CEO all have a different agenda for the measurements.
There is not a single, consistent measurement that serves the same agenda in many companies. One group is measuring for the board; another is measuring for the financial statements; a third is measuring for total circulation counts or pay per clicks. And, just how are the people that are trying to assist you supposed to figure out what it is that you want? The search firm reacts to your measures differently than the list broker. The list broker reacts differently than the Black Box co-op people. Who’s on first?
In my irritating way of asking hard questions, here are a couple of doozies for 2007:
What if you established—once and for all—a uniform protocol
of just 20 cardinal measurements developed jointly with your
Trusted Advisors and used those benchmarks uniformly across
all areas of your company?
What if you removed all ambiguity and mystery from 20 simple
benchmark measurements?
What if you got everybody to agree on 20 measurements, all
measured the same way by everybody and interpreted uniformly?
What if the CEO or owner or private equity board, or whomever
has the ownership, agrees to abide by the common measures that are
decided upon and hold the senior managers to those interpretations
without changing the rules?
What if you actually did this?
Wow! Dude!
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