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Is a catalog a marketing channel or a marketing vehicle? And what does that mean, anyway?

Depends on who you ask.

ClementDirect's Coy Clement says a vehicle is a way to get the message across and a channel is a way to make a transaction. This would mean, for instance, that a catalog is a vehicle, because customers don't buy from a catalog — they have to pick up a phone or go online or into a store.

“Of course,” he concedes, “there's some confusion, because some channels are vehicles and vice versa.”

At L.L. Bean, an operational channel is where a sale will be recorded — and that's all it is, says Nancy Fischman. “In terms of marketing, we like to say we're channel agnostic. Catalog is not a channel, it's an investment. Channel is simply the place customers chose to shop.”

At the corporate level, Crate & Barrel no longer tracks catalog as a separate channel, but rather looks at all direct channels as part of the big DM picture, John Seebeck points out.

Over time Nordstrom came to see its catalog not merely as a means of supporting the direct channel but as an advertising vehicle for all channels, says Kevin Hillstrom. Thus the expense of producing the book was charged back to corporate marketing, not Nordstrom Direct.