Freelance Catalog Copywriting
As a San Francisco freelance copywriter, I’ve written dozens of catalogs over my career. Below is a sampling of the most recent ones:
Discovery Channel School: Science Collections Grades 5-9, Spring 2000
I helped an East Coast agency win this account in 1999 when I wrote a 32-page catalog for Science Collections for Middle School teachers. It included summaries of Student Activity Books, CD-ROMs, Videos, Teachers A-Z Resource Books, Hands-On Activities and Web Guides for Physical, Life and Earth Sciences. The following year, the catalog was expanded to 60 pages. Download Discovery Channel Cover, Spring 2000 PDF
Download Elements: Page 1 PDF
Download Elements: Page 2 PDF.
Download Bacteria: Page 1 PDF.
Download Bacteria: Page 2 PDF.
US Dentek
U.S. Dentek dental products challenged my writing and organizational skills by requesting a combination 12-page catalog/sales brochure to introduce its Breath Remedy line of products, which we called “The World’s First Fresh Breath Kit.” 
This consumer/trade brochure included a complete home oral breath care system with a daily regimen kit with the entire line of Breath Remedy products: Toothpaste, Tongue Scraper, Tongue Spray, Breath Drops and Mouth Rinse. The last few pages of the catalog were for the company’s established products like Dental Piks, Tartar Scrapers, Dental First Aid Kits, and more.
Download Catalog Covers PDF.
Download Catalog Inside Pages PDF.
Cayson Culinary Designs
In June of 2005, Cayson Culinary Designs wanted a catalog/brochure to showcase their high-end chef's and server attire used by America's top restaurants. The unique cover utilizes a sculpted paper printing process to define the details.The client loved the brochure so much, it became the template for her updated Web site.
Palm 2004 Winter Catalog
Palm wanted to create a catalog/magazine to promote its most recent SmartPhones, PDAs, handheld software and accessories. So I was hired to write this 24-page catalog for PalmOne in November 2004 to boost holiday sales. Palm printed 1,000,000 catalogs and sold advertising space to Palm-compatible software companies to offset the printing fees. Kuleana Design (formerly Landis Design), SF, created the fantastic design and managed the project.
Download Adobe PDF of pages 1-11 and 24 (back cover).
Download Adobe PDF of pages 12-23 (back cover).
Palm 2003 Winter Catalog
Palm printed 500,000 of this 24-page holiday 2003 “magalog” that blended traditional catalog copy with magazine-style articles.The goal was to sell the latest, greatest products � TREO smart phones, Palm Tungsten and Zire handhelds, plus software and accessories. Kuleana Design (formerly Landis Designs), SF provided the beautiful layouts for this 24-page piece for which I wrote the catalog copy.
Download Adobe PDF of the 2003 Palm Catalog.
Intuit QuickBooks In-Box Catalog
During 2006, I wrote a dozen projects for the good people at Intuit, including this QuickBooks 32-page Catalog for Checks, Envelopes, Supplies and More, and the companion Intuit Market Website for all these products.
In fact, in 1994, I successfully introduced Quicken users to QuickBooks in the first direct mail piece ever written for this financial product that’s long been the leader in the business software field.
This catalog was mailed to anyone who was a new QuickBooks customers to tell them about the vast array of checks, envelopes, supplies, and more. Best of all, all of these products are compatible with Quicken and QuickBooks software. Download Part I of the Catalog (PDF).
Download Part II of the Catalog (PDF).
Batter Blaster is taking off. It’s now available for purchase at Costco, Andronico’s, Whole Foods, and a few markets in the Arizona and the Pacific Northwest.
• Blue Shield of California wanted to send a direct mail piece to potential beneficiaries to remind them that they no longer have to wait six months to get coverage for a pre-existing medical condition. We decided to use a self-mailer approach. This blue, black and white six-panel mailer utilized an arresting headline, straightforward copy, competitive Blue Shield personal HMO rate charts, and a tear-off postcard so recipients could request a call. It was very successful by returning a high response rate.
“Venture Technologists” is a new term for companies like Squid Labs that incubate technologies to drive high-growth opportunities.
There are dozens of city dining guides for restaurants. The best-known is Zagat’s for major cities. 
From that experience, I learned that I could make a living as a freelance copywriter, that I was pretty good at marketing myself, and that I had quite a large network of contacts that I started calling “The GilNet.”
A few of the components are shown here. 
1) Bank of America — As an Associate Creative Director at Grey Advertising, San Francisco copywriter, I wrote this campaign of three newspaper ads for BofA’s Home Loan division. The ads were to have run for six weeks. But after only two, the client asked the agency to stop running them because the phone lines were swamped with a surplus of calls. Offering BofA’s lowest rates and the first ever refinancing adjustable rate home loans were also contributing factors to their success.
Here are samples of some of my favorites:
Norton Ghost 6.0 Direct Mail Package — For Norton, this direct response package with an OE, personalized letter, three-panel brochure, response device and BRE was mailed to IT Managers, offering a 30-day free trial on a product that would help them “Fix PC user problems now before they became IT problems later.” 
3) Oracle OLAP Self-Mailer — To me, OLAP always sounded like a Swedish person. But it’s actually an acronym for “On-Line Analytical Processing.” This was a very technical self-mailer about Oracle’s OLAP Solution. To draw in the audience, we showed a few traffic arrows and the headline, originally by baseball great Yogi Berra, “When you get to the fork in the road, take it.” The copy continued, “After all, both roads lead to Oracle, The Open OLAP Solution.”