Catalog Review

I'm going to have some time in August for something different. Normally, I analyze catalog businesses via actual customer transactions. Those projects are a bit more costly ($15,000 to $30,000 ... as you already know).

If you'd like me to look over your existing reporting and existing segmentation for the past several years to see what trends I can identify ... and how those trends impact the future, contact me (kevinh@minethatdata.com). This would be a week-ish (timeframe) review and would cost considerably less than the normal month-long project that you're familiar with.

Making a Delicious Omlette

Last month I told you about Fallow.

Today, I share with you one of their videos ... how to make an omelette like a chef.

First of all, I followed the instructions ... and the omelette was SENSATIONAL! My goodness. I was enthralled with the folding process ... you fold the omelette by one-third, then fold the remaining two-thirds over the top of the one-third, and then you turn it over, hiding any sins associated with the folding process. Just like that the omelette has five layers (egg / filling / egg / filling / egg), which makes it both fluffy and elegant at the same time.

They teach you how to do this, for free.

They teach every competitor how to do this, for free.

They don't lack for business. They are using Customer Media Marketing to fill their restaurants.

What is the parallel for your business? Discuss.

Northwestern Steak House

In Mason City (Iowa) there is a century-old restaurant that has the formula for success nailed down. The restaurant? Northwestern Steak House (click here). It's not located in a modern building ... or a large building.

They break rules. You cannot make a reservation until 4:30pm of the day you want to eat, and guess what? If you make a reservation, you'll eat late, because there is a line outside the door. On the day of our visit, the line formed at 3:45pm.

When you enter at 4:30pm, you are pointed to a table. By 4:31pm (I checked on my watch), the restaurant is full ... those still in line are asked to go to the upstairs lounge where they can enjoy a beverage and wait for a 5:45pm - 6:00pm seating.

Our order was taken at 4:37pm. By 4:50pm they were taking reservations for 8:00pm.

They serve the classic tiny salad with pickle wedge and hard boiled egg ... in this case with French Dressing ... the same salad they served me in the late 1980s.

Why do people keep coming here? They serve a buttery Greek mixture that they pour on top of the side of pasta or rice you get with your meal (along with some parmesan cheese) - they also serve the buttery greek mixture with your steak. It's to die for!!

By they way, that's the petite filet pictured ... the walleye had to be the size of Lake Erie.

They embrace tradition ... same food they've served for decades, they have a hook that is different than everybody else (buttery Greek mixture), and they break rules by not taking reservations until they open ... meaning they have a line out the door that forms at 3:45pm.

What is the "hook" that makes your business special?

Is there a way to ignore the omnichannel nonsense of always having inventory in stock in all channels in an effort to create urgency?

I mean, this business is 100 years old and they're packing the place. Your business has traditions, right? Use 'em to your advantage!!

P.S.: One of the blatant errors of the omnichannel era was the concept of having products always available, in all channels, at all times. There are times when that is a valuable concept (i.e. you have a check engine light and the Ford dealership has your part in stock). But there are times when you need to sell out of something valuable ... quickly ... and the customer needs to know that, prompting the customer to act immediately.

The Peak of the Omnichannel Era, in One Simple Graph

Nordstrom became a private company several weeks ago. I saved the multi-year trend of their stock price. What year was the peak of the "omnichannel era"?

If you answered "2015", trust your instincts.

From 2016 and beyond, the loss of traffic in stores became untenable.

• It was too easy to buy online.
• Amazon absolutely mulched everything in their sights.
• Generational shopping differences cut off younger customers from older brands (I'm looking at you, Macy's).
• What I now call "Customer Media Marketing" began to take shape in this timeframe.

I was in meetings in this timeframe with retail brands ... Executives were furious that store traffic was SO BAD ... they'd bark at the Online Marketing Director that thirty years of store presence caused the online channel to succeed, not a banner ad on a shady website where the marketer couldn't possibly track down the bad players who were siphoning marketing dollars from the brand. They'd spend all this time trying to attribute (sound familiar) online sales to the store that likely "caused" the online order.

Eventually, CFOs figured out it was all nonsense, they told the world that square footage was untenable in the modern world, and the omnichannel movement ended.

Our world evolves, in an unending manner.

• Startups need funding from VCs.
• VCs need to get paid via IPOs.
• Banks lend when Publicly Traded brands fail to grow or need to grow in an expensive manner.
• Private Equity scoops up the remnants when brands begin to die, allowing banks to get paid while not having to publicly publish failures anymore.
• Private Equity (sometimes) loads the brand up with debt, pumps the numbers, and then sells to a "less smart" buyer, who is left holding the bag.

The secret to success in business is to not be the person left holding the bag.

Sometimes Consultants See Things ...

There are times when several of you within a vertical hire me in a similar timeframe (thanks to ChatGPT for framing the situation).

These instances were far more plentiful twenty-five years ago. In the catalog world, your list broker knew what your competitors were doing, and they couldn't tell you what your competitors were doing. If they ever let anything slip, they were done.

Talk to these folks AFTER you leave a vertical (i.e. apparel or home), and yeah, you realize how blind every single company is. You also realize the absolute genius that every single company possesses.

There are "genius situations" happening in 2025. Work your network over, and figure out what is happening. Business challenges frequently lead to genius solutions. Some of you are cooking with gas right now!

Beachwaver

Website (click here).

TikTok (click here).

Beachwaver TV (click here).

Under ten second video of guy in the distribution center packing products (liked 73,000 times). When is the last time you bothered to say anything about Ralph and Charlene in your distribution center? If you think it is hard to get employees to work (#peoplewontwork), how much easier might it be if those employees are featured in your marketing efforts?

Ambassador Community (click here).

This sure smells like Direct Response Marketing. Yet it is different, isn't it? This looks a lot like Customer Media Marketing.

Also - it bypasses traditional search/social ... the model ultimately uses the organic nature of each channel to benefit the brand. Yes, they're paying the gatekeepers ... but it isn't the core of the business model, is it?

An Imbalanced Ecosystem

Back to our working hypothesis.

If you think about Customer Media Marketing as a YouTube / TikTok / AI centric video/search platform fused with Community, you immediately see that "traffic" has to flow into those avenues and ultimately flow out of Direct Response Marketing.

This flow out of "traditional search + traditional social" creates an imbalanced ecosystem.

Think about it this way ... pretend you have 100 customers in the old ecosystem. 10 of the 100 customers leak out into YouTube / TikTok / AI, leaving 90 customers in the old ecosystem. The marketer notices that response is 10% worse because the marketer spends money but 10% of the traffic is "gone", driving down ROAS, driving down profitability.

The marketer has two responses here.

The marketer likely notices that certain responsive keywords are "more expensive" ... and they are more expensive because every other marketer decides to go after the responsive keywords, de-emphasizing low performing keywords. The competition is good for the old ecosystem, in that the old ecosystem has pricing authority, but is bad for the marketer, who now pays more and gets less.

As long as the marketer fails to realize that Customer Media Marketing is "a thing" ... a fusion of Video / Community / AI ... problems exist in the p&l. If the marketer is "advertising dependent" (and many of you are), performance is bad, the top-line contracts, and most importantly, it becomes terribly hard to find new customers because customers have leaked out of the old ecosystem into the Customer Media Marketing ecosystem.

The imbalances in the old ecosystem will correct over time, but the correction process can be painful.

Many of you (look at your new customer counts) are dealing with this correction process.

P.S.:  If you want to see an example of a company dealing with this correction process, read this email message ... show me where the merchandise is? Or the community? Or video? Or any way to create awareness?

• In their defense, they are directing you to Insta and some of their Reels have a reasonable number of views. They're leveraging a decade-old style of social. Better than not leveraging it, sure.

P.P.S.:  Back in 2007 one of the commenters on my blog mentioned that big/old companies were too stupid to leverage social media properly and they'd be DEAD in a few years (emphasis on dead was hers). No brand dies quickly unless there is a ridiculous level of financial mismanagement. Instead, brands die very slowly, they participate in an imbalanced ecosystem that drains their blood one drop at a time ... for a long time.

The Four Pests Campaign

For whatever the reason, I wasn't aware of this "Great Moment in Political Leadership" (click here).

• If you kill the sparrows, considering them a "pest", you might not realize that locust populations will grow, creating an even bigger problem.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I carried this book with me to most meetings (#nerd).

The book was a dense mathematical exploration of the interconnectedness of different biological situations. If you had an area with 10 wolves and 200 rabbits and somebody killed 100 rabbits, seven wolves would starve to death, leaving you with three wolves, causing the population of 100 rabbits to grow to 500 rabbits (because there weren't enough wolves to eat the rabbits).

That same level of interconnectedness is happening in modern marketing ... specifically, Customer Media Marketing.

As customers leak out of Direct Response Marketing, there isn't enough "food" for Direct Response Marketing. This causes marketers to spend more on the customers that remain, not even knowing that fewer customers remain, driving down the performance of their marketing efforts. All of a sudden people are lamenting the cost of clicks and grumbling about "Facebook being dead".

Eventually, the lack of "performance" causes marketers to look for other ways to reach customers (pushing them to Customer Media Marketing), transforming Direct Response Marketing. I mean, in 2000 we thought that Digital Marketing was fundamentally different than Direct Response marketing ... in 2025 we know they are essentially similar. Customer Media Marketing seems different today. Who knows how we'll view it in 2050?

Regardless, marketing concepts closely relate to biology and ecology. We're heading down an interesting path with both AI and Customer Media Marketing changing the "ecosystem" we belong to.