These seasonal catalogs include the micro-famous Rwanda Simbi tasting note, which inspired the blogosphere and nearly doubled our social media following, which is probably why you’re here.
Seasonal Releases
More importantly, each of the product stories sits between 200-240 words, one minute of silent reading for an American college frosh. Each is accompanied by an impressionistic tasting note, using keywords which I gathered from roasters and international coffee tasters.
As usual, I engaged in original research and fact-checking, while maintaining the House Style (which I invented) for Brand Consistency (in Caps!).
Here we go… Did you open these things? They’re between eight and thirty pages each. They include little intros, commenting on the latest hipster haute-coffee trends of the go-go 2000s in Start-Up-Francisco, of which I’m very proud.
More importantly, every one of these dozens of coffees is presented with a unique hook. Consider the November 2017 mini-release sheet below: Each of those three coffees gets pitched with a different hook, which is woven throughout the 220-word sales story. In the first case, it’s the mystery of the vetiver taste descriptor. For another, it’s people “not knowing how to relax.” For the third, it’s all about wholesome mutual aid in an imperfect world.
All three of those included personal first-hand research that I had done, sometimes years earlier, then accessed when the time came.
It’s worth remembering that I composed these catalogs / sales brochures for multiple audiences:
a) Our own baristas, sales folk, and delivery folk.
b) People who owned or worked at our hundreds of wholesale accounts throughout North America and Asia.
c) Potential wholesale clients.
d) Retail customers.
e) Food bloggers, print media, and other influencers.
f) You.