Consumers are in the driver’s seat today. And it is the Web that has put them there.

Today’s savvy consumers engage with brands on their own terms – when they want and the way they want. They also connect with brands through multiple channels – researching, comparing, and buying as they choose – on the Web, through the mail, over the phone, and in brick and mortar stores.

And they behave in many different ways. Some shop at 2:00 p.m., others shop at 2:00 a.m. Some do their “pre-shopping” on the Web and then buy in brick and mortar stores, while others pre-shop in brick and mortar stores and then buy on the Web.

The most successful marketers are the ones who recognize and adapt to this new reality that relationships with today’s consumers occur at the consumer’s discretion. The brand no longer calls the shots.

As marketers, we must be relevant and accessible in all channels – wherever the consumer wants to engage. Since more and more consumers are engaging with brands in several channels, our marketing efforts must be integrated.

And therein lies the challenge. Not only must the customer experience at all levels be consistent, but customer data must now be gathered, analyzed, and leveraged across channels. Customer databases need to provide a single view of customer behavior and relationships so we can deliver measureable marketing results.

The new realities of consumer marketing require a new kind of agency. Not a traditional media agency, not a direct marketing agency, and not an interactive agency, but an agency that can seamlessly link marketing in the traditional offline world to marketing in the online world. And it can deliver consistent, branded experiences and messages across all channels. The new kind of agency also takes a 360° degree view of consumers and their behavior across all channels. And the new kind of agency understands when media and channels complement each other and when they compete.

Catalyst Direct is that new kind of agency. Founded as a traditional direct marketing agency, Catalyst began preparing for the new realities in consumer marketing more than three years ago.

Today, our work is integrated across multiple channels. The databases that we develop for clients, our systems, and our tools provide a holistic view of customers and their behavior.

In 2006, we significantly increased our ability to analyze and work with customer data when we acquired the data and marketing analytics company, Equient. The company, which had been owned by General Dynamics, specialized in customer profiling, segmentation and modeling. The data analysts and statisticians who came with the acquisition greatly enhanced our ability to provide clients with insight and knowledge about how their customers behave.

Then, in 2007, we acquired Auragen Communications, a leader in strategic interactive services. The acquisition allows us to combine the targeting and one-to-one communications of traditional direct marketing with the engagement and interactivity of the Web.

And we recently reorganized Catalyst Direct, blowing away the traditional media vs. interactive silos so we can efficiently provide and measure integrated, multi-channel programs.

The process of putting your life online, in aggregate, has been called “lifestreaming,” so it’s inevitable that brands (having personalities all their own) would join in: Here’s a good introductory article on lifestreaming for brands.

An Excerpt: “It’s fairly obvious why companies want to get their brand out into social media sites like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and then wrap it up into feeds. It’s to get their brand out beyond their website, to engage users and entice them into discussions about their products.”

While this article implies that lifestreaming for brands is particularly focused on lifestyle products, we’ve already recommended it to some of our non-profit clients.  For organizations who wish to build a feeling of “membership,” a lifestream can be just the thing to keep people involved but do so at little or no cost.

Kodak, one of our largest customers, is ahead of the curve here.   You can view (and subscribe!) to the Kodak stream here.  (BTW, kudos to Kodak for using off the shelf tools like FriendFeed, Twitter, and Flickr… they are doing it right!)

Please note: This post was originally written using the term “brandstream,” but I have since learned that that term was trademarked by Fricken Company in 1998.  Kudos to them for identifying such an important trend so early on!   Fricken does business as “Brandstream Inc.” and was founded by Scott Bedbury, the author of A New Brand World.

Found this excellent review of mobile trends in the US and UK.   Visit Mobile Life 2008 and download the full report (pdf).

I’m proud to announce the new ParagonSports.com is live.  If you live in the NYC area, chances are you’ve heard of Paragon Sports.  If you’re not in the area (just like me) their newly redesigned site (designed by Catalyst) has 30,000 of their products and major brands available.

The NEW ParagonSports.com

Going to the physical store is a great experience… it’s like visiting a niche specialty shop for running, or camping, or baseball, or rock climbing or… well you get the idea.  They have a ton of brands and a ton of lines in those brands.  That same breadth is available online too!  If you don’t believe me, just check out their brands page; the list is huge.

As you can imagine, that’s a lot of products to organize and wade through to find the right one.  They were available on the previous site (see screenshot below), but we really wanted to make it quick and easy to find the right one.   We also wanted to pull the feel of the store and what it all represents into the design and interface of the online store.

We also had to do quite a bit of research, as we questioned what someone in downtown Manhattan might need a kayak for.  It all made sense after some user research discovering the enthusiasts who walk the walk and appreciate Paragon’s authenticity… or the aspirationals only talk the talk, but they do it with style… or some of the other types of shoppers like jumpers or NBLBs (Need-Based Loyal Buyers).  I could go on and on about this… let me know if you want to hear more!

So, all in all, it’s a new navigation, a new page structure and user interface, new content, a new back-end to support it all and a brand focused visual design to bring it all together.  The products have been reorganized into the way you would shop and how you think about the products.  As you drill into major categories, the guided navigation gives you relative and appropriate attributes to help filter and narrow your search.  And, it’s all wrapped in a new look and feel that really targets in on the urban living sports enthusiast (and yeah, I love that phrase)!

The Previous ParagonSports.com Site

We all heard the headline last week. “Microsoft makes a bid for Yahoo!” (an unsolicited $44.5 billion bid to be exact).

Yahoo! has many great assets — e-mail, the portal site, flickr, del.icio.us. — but this offer is all about search advertising.

A “Micro-Hoo,” as some writers are calling the potential combination, “will have the second-largest ad network and a vast array of sites on which to place its own ad,” according to Saul Hansell of the New York Times.

Hansell has a great analysis of why this merge should make more sense to Yahoo! than the recently discussed alternative of turning over its own search advertising to Google.

“There is no longer a strict difference between search ads — sold in a huge auction — and brand ads — sold by a sales force over lunch. Rather, there is increasingly a smooth gradation, with even some graphic ads for big brands placed through automated systems and, soon, advertising exchanges. I suspect — although I’m not sure — that one big system that can handle all sorts of ads will have advantages over narrower advertising networks,” Hansell writes.

But if this acquisition does happen, what does it mean for your search (SEM and SEO) marketing strategies?

As we wait for this deal to shake out, here are two opinions worth a read:

• What Will Microsoft Yahoo Merger Mean for SEO?
• Microsoft-Yahoo: Search Marketing Trends That Matter

Jakob Nielsen has posted two articles of note to direct marketers:

1. Why Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous. Nielsen is right on the money here — literally — for once taking the economically prudent path of ROI and aligning it with the user-centered path of UI. This post is not to be missed. (Though, in truth, the Web 2.0 things your company does should represent the bleeding edge of a cutting edge of a comprehensive strategy. If they are, more power to you. Ignore him.)
2. 10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities. As a corollary to his rant against Web 2.0, Nielsen also points out the highest ROI revisions you can make to your site. I couldn’t agree more. (This is exactly the sort of detail I dig into at my other blog, etailology.com)

Both are loaded with great information … even if they are a bit preachy.  :-)

As you may know by now, Catalyst Direct recently purchased the interactive agency, Auragen Communications. Auragen began in 1995, as one of the first organizations of its kind, and built an impressive record delivering strategic brand experiences online to leading national companies such as Russell Investments and Eastman Kodak Company. Now we are integrating this knowledge and experience into Catalyst. Here’s why.

We see it every day—more and more marketing dollars are shifting to the Internet. The Direct Marketing Association’s Power of Direct Marketing report predicts that expenditures in Internet marketing and commercial e-mail will claim more than 11% of the total direct marketing spend this year.

Over the next five years direct marketing will become even more Internet-oriented as online spending grows faster than traditional direct marketing media spending. At Catalyst, we’re seeing an even faster shift. Last year, interactive projects accounted for 13% of our clients’ spend. This year it will be closer to 20%.

The fastest shift is occurring in the B2B category. And there is a very logical reason. Business decision makers are constantly looking for research and information that can help them make sound business decisions.

The Web is easier and less intrusive than other forms of interaction. Consequently we see this as an opportunity to leverage the Web within marketing campaigns to extend selling messages and create dynamic interaction with prospects and clients.

Over the past four years, virtually all of our B2B campaigns have contained a landing page, a personalized URL or a Web site as a destination point. In our efforts to drive purchase behavior, we see the Web as a fundamental component of all integrated direct marketing programs.