Harvesting fresh creative

Operating a farm is hard work — and running a catalog of products for farmers no doubt has its challenges too. Hoping for a bumper crop of fresh ideas, Orscheln Farm & Home submitted its 2006 edition for a critique. Catalog pros Davey Rosenbaum, vice president of marketing operations for Morristown, NJ-based consultancy Marketsmith, and Monika J. Shourie, account manager of San Francisco-based consultancy Character, plowed through the 154-page edition, noting where the book is a barn-burner and where it needs a little fertilization.

Davey Rosenbaum

Orscheln Farm & Home is a family-owned chain of 133 farm stores in nine midwestern states. The company produces a catalog of farm supplies, automotive products, hardware, lawn and garden supplies, clothing, housewares, and pet supplies. The 8-1/2" × 11" catalog is primarily in black and white on newsprint-type paper. It has a number of color ads, some on glossy paper, in the front, in the middle, and at the end of the book.

I'm assuming that the book is strictly a store driver, since there is no phone number (toll-free or otherwise) immediately obvious in the book for customers to call to order or ask questions, and there is no Web address to check out for ordering or further information. If the goal of the catalog is to do more than drive people to one of the stores, Orscheln needs to include more information and more-specific directive messaging.

On the front cover, the Orscheln branding is lost at the bottom. The company name is at the top but not the logo. There is no need to show the name and the tagline at the top and then place the logo and tagline at the bottom, as Orscheln has. It would be more effective to place the logo and tagline at the top. The tagline, “Answers & Low Prices Down Every Aisle,” is an important message and one that can guide the branding and messaging throughout the book.

The catalog cover also does not tell the recipient anything about the contents of the book. All the messages have to do with buying — interest-free financing, awards program, gift card, low prices. I strongly advise including some sort of description of the contents of the book and its purpose, as well as a call to action to invite the reader inside, such as “From hog pellets to power mowers, from safety vests to tractor tires — your local store for farm/garden and automotive equipment and supplies. See page 23 to find a store near you.” Or maybe the address of the closest store could be ink-jetted in a starburst on the cover.

It's not clear why there is a picture of a plant shoot on the cover. Orscheln does not sell plants, and the picture is not related to any of the messages. Orscheln might want some sort of lifestyle picture of a customer using several of the products — for instance, wearing a pair of boots and changing the tire on a tractor with fencing in the background. If Orscheln wants to appeal to both its farm/rural clientele as well as homeowners at large, it might consider mailing two different covers with different images to the two potential customer groups.

Because the catalog accepts advertisements/co-op dollars, I suggest that Orscheln evaluate annually its co-op strategy and the placement of the ads. The company must make sure that the co-op strategy does not conflict with its best interests in terms of promoting its full line of products and generating store buyers. For example, a number of advertisements appear on the inside front cover and gatefold, taking up valuable real estate that may serve Orscheln's mission better if used for some self-promotion.

Overall, the placement of the advertisements in the catalog is distracting. Also, running eight pages of product ads before the table of contents can be confusing to the reader. It is not even clear whether these products are available at the Orscheln stores or not.

I suggest Orscheln run two sections of color ads in the book. The first section would be the inside front and back covers and the outside back cover. The second section would be in the middle. All the other ads, including the black-and-white ones, would run here, and the section would clearly be labeled “advertisements.” If all the ads are for products included in the catalog, it might be useful to put in each ad “please see page…” It may also be useful to have a directory of advertisers after the table of contents so that, again, the ads are clearly marked as ads.

The immediate inside pages are an opportunity for Orscheln to tell its story — in business for almost 50 years, founded by Ed and William Orscheln, local folks, neighbors — and set the stage emotionally for the customers' shopping experience, highlighting points of difference, letting people know that everything in the book is available at a store near them, identifying any offerings (products or categories) it wishes to promote. Also the book needs a call to action here, as it does on the front cover, inviting readers to look throughout the pages.

These initial pages set the tone of the book. It is the place to use icons to identify sections and make shopping easier; for instance, the place to introduce Orscheln's “answer man,” which could be positioned as a knowledgeable farmer who provides the “answers down every aisle,” as the tagline says.

This section is also where it is important to reinforce the message that Orscheln Farm & Home has been providing quality goods at the lowest prices for decades and that customers can count on Orscheln for a good deal as well as for answers to their questions.

In the table of contents, the general listing of the product categories is good. But an improvement would be to include financing options, awards program, gift cards, and any other company offerings so that readers can find them easily.