Everybody Makes This Mistake

And by everybody, I mean every incumbent who is about to be sent directly into orbit by new technology.

Do you remember the Lemonheaded comments from catalog leaders back in the 2000-2006 timeframe? I do. They were inescapable. "Ecommerce and Catalogs are the same thing ... the website IS your catalog!!!" Nope. Wrong. Papertarians are still arguing to this day. By 2009 (if I remember correctly) the Catalog Conference ended in New Orleans. Catalog Age went away. DMNews executed the classic "we are hip and modern" gambit with "The Big Fat Marketing Blog" (remember that one?), then they went away. Everything went away. Because ecommerce was not cataloging, even if the same foundational strategies applied to both. Old-school skills were not valued.

• Note:  Look at what I do for project work as we end 2025 and compare it to the work I performed in 2016 or in 2007 when I started my consulting work. It's barely recognizable. Times change. You can't bolt the future onto the past, though we all want to because it helps us feel like we still have purpose.

The people who disrupted classic catalog marketing are the ones who are about to be disrupted. Every generation is disrupted.

P.S.:  I spoke with a 62 year old person who lost his job ... his job (leading one department) was replaced with a position that led four departments. The person hired to replace him was a person with no experience in his industry. Yes, this broke the heart of the 62 year old who spent an entire career doing credible work only to be thrown away and replaced by an inexpensive person with no experience. The 62 year old looked at me and said, "will the young people who did this to me ever get their comeuppance"? Oh yes, they're going to get it. They most certainly will get their comeuppance. The same Search guru who told people that catalog markers were Luddites not deserving of good things doesn't see it yet ... but AI is coming for them, and they'll make the same mistakes the catalog professional did as they are being disrupted.