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.