A Welcome Surprise...
Here we are lamenting the loss of the Ikea catalogue, the gold standard of catalogues over the past 70 years, when BAM holiday time hits us and the world’s fourth-largest company’s catalogue lands directly in our home mailbox. “Ready, Set, Play, Amazon’s Holiday Kids Gift Book is Here” it says right on the front cover, with an adorable fox cheerfully delivering an Amazon package. Forget drones; we want a fox to deliver our packages from now on. Does fox delivery come with our Prime Membership?
All jokes aside, the catalogue is impressive, and we can all learn from it. Here are some key features in this catalogue that might help when you’re printing a booklet or catalogue.
Storytelling & Engagement
When you open the catalogue, you’re invited to “step into a wintry wonderland full of fun, with activities and gifts to spark smiles for everyone.” You’re instantly drawn into this artistic woodland theme, encouraged to participate, play, create, and of course, shop! By doing this, Amazon effectively creates a multi-purpose catalogue for readers of all ages. First, the parents are likely to see this as a useful and temporary toy for the children to play with and second, the children who do play with it will see the toys and tell their parents their holiday wish list. It’s genius, perhaps even diabolical.
Consider the stories that you can tell.
Co-Op Marketing
The toys within this booklet are not random no-name toys. Many, if not most, are household name brands – Crayola, Fisher-Price, Lego, Play-Doh, for example. Wouldn’t it make sense to collaborate with these brands to offer them space in the catalogue for a fee as we approach the largest shopping season of the year?
Are there any suppliers/partners that would collaborate with you to help offset the costs?
From Print to Web
Oh boy, how easy Amazon makes it to shop. It’s almost as if they’re really good at what they do. Throughout the catalogue, every two or three pages there are instructions on how to pull up products in the Amazon app.
- Open your Amazon App
- Tap the camera button next to the search bar
- Scan the product image for listing
- Scan the QR Code for more gifts.
Not only that, but on nearly every spread, the footer encourages readers to visit a specific link on the Amazon website.
These are excellent examples of print facilitating web views and using both mediums together for easy purchasing. There’s no doubt this will help drive sales.
All in all, we think Amazon has hit the mark and will continue to see good results with this catalogue. We’ll be sure to consider these lessons for future projects. You’ll be able to see some of this in action in our upcoming case study on designing booklets and catalogues.
