Why I Have a Love-hate Relationship With the Annual Catalog Conference
By the time you read this, another catalog conference (the ACCM) will just about to be coming to a close. This year up in Boston. I didn’t get to go this year due to my son’s high school graduation, which disappoints me.
I’m not disappointed for the reasons you may think, however.
The thing I love most about going to the annual catalog conference and other direct marketing events is the camaraderie I feel with industry peers. To me it’s a chance to reconnect with people I normally don’t get to see throughout the year.
Oddly enough, the people I’ll miss not seeing the most are the vendors I’ve worked with over the years. These are the people who have allowed me to do my job to the best of my abilities. I truly believe that the job of a direct marketer is just as much externally focused (if not more) as it is internally.
While as a consultant and/or employee I’m internally responsible for my objectives and my team — it’s the vendors I choose that can make or break how the results turn out. These folks have saved my bacon more times that I care to recall. They’ve made me look good, turned me into a hero by keeping my costs in line, meeting some ridiculously short timelines at times, found solutions for me that I thought didn’t exist, and even played catalog psychotherapist for me a few times.
And they get very little credit for this.
‘Vendor-Partners’
Which is why I believe in the term “vendor-partners,” and today I salute them in this post.
I also believe that the opportunity to hang out with them at the conference or at one their receptions outside the context of our everyday working relationship is a privilege for me.
- People:
- Jim Gilbert
- Places:
- Boston
Jim Gilbert has had a storied career in direct and digital marketing resulting in a burning desire to tell stories that educate, inform, and inspire marketers to new heights of success.
After years of marketing consulting, Jim decided it was time to “put his money where his mouth was" and build his own e-commerce company, Premo Natural Products, with its flagship product, Premo Guard Bed Bug & Mite Sprays. Premo in its second year is poised to eclipse 100 percent growth.
Jim has been writing for Target Marketing Group since 2006, first on the pages of Catalog Success Magazine, then as the first blogger for its online division. Jim continues to write for Total Retail.
Along the way, Jim has led the Florida Direct Marketing Association as their Marketing Chair and then three-term President, been an Adjunct Professor of Direct and Digital marketing for Miami International University, and created a lecture series, “The 9 Immutable Laws of Social Media Marketing,” which he has presented across the country at conferences and universities.
