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Nostalgia is winning, and J.Crew is riding the wave all the way to its shoppers’ mailboxes — yes, physical mailboxes.
After a four-year hiatus, the retailer’s iconic catalogue is back and, it says, better than ever, with a series of digital touchpoints that bring the analogue experience into the 2020s. This is the latest move in J.Crew’s ongoing rebuild: since appointing CEO Libby Wadle in November 2020, just months after the company exited bankruptcy, J.Crew Group has had its eyes on returning the brand and its preppy staples to its former glory days. With a rabid, near-cultish fanbase, the printed catalogue is an inimitable piece of that puzzle.
But J.Crew is not alone. Patagonia’s catalogue, titled “The Cleanest Line”, is more than a line sheet of its products. The catalogue features a dynamic stable of outdoor photography, prompting consumers to go on adventures themselves. American luxury eyewear brand Moscot, one of the oldest local businesses in New York, has long published catalogues for its consumers to learn about the brand’s story. Elsewhere in the US, PME Legend — a lifestyle brand that celebrates cargo pilots and their classic propeller-driven planes — offers its shoppers a digital catalogue that showcases its historic apparel in tandem with the adventure-laden lifestyle its brand emits.
Aside from the hard-copy catalogues the retailer first pioneered in the 1980s, magazines, too, are integrating advertorials to combat dwindling budgets. In August, Katie Grand’s Perfect magazine unveiled its latest issue, which stars multi-hyphenate Addison Rae in fashion exclusively by Coach. And then there are the brand zines: Bottega Veneta, Loewe, Mulberry, and even Nike have launched physical “zines” — non-commercial, self-published publications — in recent years.
“The truth is simple,” says Thomaï Serdari, PhD, a professor of marketing and the director of NYU Stern’s Luxury and Retail MBA programme. “There’s so much digital noise that early movers are hoping to get the customer’s attention away from the digital landscape and in a ‘slow’ mode of consumption.”
The marketing ROI
Within the American fashion landscape, the catalogue has a storied past dating back to Sears, Roebuck and Co’s first mail-order dispatch in 1888.
J.Crew, meanwhile, released its first catalogue in 1983, to stay competitive with brands like Ralph Lauren that were increasingly incorporating them into their marketing mix. At the peak of the J.Crew catalogue’s 1980s heyday, the brand was releasing 14 issues a year and bringing its preppy-cool sensibilities into the homes of millions of Americans for free.
Today, though, catalogues serve a less practical purpose. “While the original was both a direct source for customers to shop and also experience the lifestyle of J.Crew, the physical catalogue of today is one important element of the ecosystem of this campaign that serves to complement our digital and social initiatives,” says Halsey Anderson, J.Crew’s SVP of brand marketing.
This includes both in-app and in-person integrations, like shoppable QR codes and donation tie-ins, with this season’s edition benefitting the Teens 360º initiative at the New York Public Library, which includes programmes, resources, services, summer-engagement campaigns, community spaces, and more designed just for teens. Such 21st-century add-ons may be on-trend, but just as four decades ago, the old-fashioned focus on dreamy, aspirational creative remains the project’s point of differentiation.
The imagery itself is poignantly nostalgic, with photographers like Theo Wenner and Laura Jane Coulson capturing a romp through Central Park or a family weekend at their charming beach house. The products are on display, but not the focus; the lifestyle is what’s being sold. To accomplish this, J.Crew brought on Parisian-based creative design studio Atelier Franck Durand, which is responsible for campaigns for the likes of Loro Piana and Tory Burch.
“The relaunch also serves as a strategic tool to strengthen our connection with both loyal customers and new audiences,” says Anderson, “enhancing their overall experience with the brand”.
It’s no secret catalogues are a buzzy marketing ploy (on TikTok, for instance, there are more than 5.6 million videos containing the “J.Crew catalog” keyword), and that’s because they offer a distinctly different ROI than the now-ubiquitous social campaign, or something more traditional, like out-of-home advertising.
The aforementioned zines fall somewhere in the middle: zines are a way to express ideas and identity, while catalogues are a means to sell products. The content is an important differentiator. Zines are more editorialised outside product details — the Bottega Veneta zine, for instance, features behind-the-scenes sketches, stickers and a travel notebook — and tend to be self-published, being distributed by brands or even bookstores. Catalogues remain categorically direct-to-consumer and appeal to those brands looking to prioritise visual brand story; however, stylised, the products are the focus, not the ideas.
Writer and brand strategist Erika Veurink, who has worked on catalogue shoots in the past, explains that with catalogues, the goal may be more intangible and less tied to conventional marketing KPIs, like customer leads and conversion rates.
“The ROI, if you will, was imagining a world for the brand that potential customers could step into,” she says. “In the case of J.Crew at present, a physical catalogue forces people to slow down. It’s great for people who are used to shopping via this model and great for people who’ve never received a paper catalogue in the mail in their life.”
What to consider
Still, they come at a cost. Catalogues are expensive pieces of marketing, especially if made with the intention to convert enthusiasts to loyalists. And according to Serdari, brands must consider two key pillars before committing: audience and execution.
“First, the brand pillars need to be well defined,” she says. “What is the brand’s persona? Who is it addressing? In other words, [the brand] is going to need recognisability. Then it needs to place emphasis on the consumer’s lifestyle. Which moment exemplifies the customer’s story and why? How can this be staged in an inspiring way?”
Attention to detail helps, from high-grade paper to unexpected styling. Jesica Wagstaff, a content creator who writes the fashion-theory newsletter “A Sunday Journal”, explains that today’s consumers are more educated on quality and construction, so a great catalogue needs to go beyond communicating identity — and evolve alongside the brand itself.
“We don’t want the white-Nantucket-summer-share-house fantasy regurgitated to us,” says Veurink.
Should other retailers follow suit? After all, the print catalogue can, when done correctly, provide inspiration that Serdari says feels “intimate and dreamy”, particularly as younger consumers increasingly yearn for a slower pace of life.
“Catalogues are certainly novel, and perhaps even trustworthy in a highly digital and increasingly artificial world,” says Wagstaff. “However, I cannot imagine another American retailer where this marketing strategy makes sense. J.Crew stands alone as the last great mass-produced catalogue, and perhaps that says it all.”
Maybe it simply comes down to money. Veurink says that if you think you should make a paper catalogue, ask yourself if you can afford the experiment. Without the heritage and iconic history of a highly successful catalogue, it may make less sense.
“Brands with preexisting catalogues and real sales from that channel should think about handing the reins over to cooler, younger creative people to see if they can make a wave,” says Veurink. “But as a directive to brands at large? I’d say the juice might not be worth the squeeze.”
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