The Aberdeen Group Openly Belittles Catalogers

On the Multichannel Merchant website, Aberdeen Group Analyst Jeff Zabin has this to say about catalogers in this article:

Reflecting on Al Gore’s recent acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless work in raising international awareness of global climate change, and opening my mailbox to discover yet another deluge of post-holiday merchandise catalogs, I can’t help but think about the environmental impact of the direct mail industry.

Each year, more than 100 million trees are destroyed, three million cars’ worth of energy is consumed and reprehensible-by-any-measure amounts of greenhouse gas is emitted into the atmosphere—all in the name of producing, distributing and disposing of direct mail solicitations.

The Aberdeen Group is owned by Harte-Hanks, a company that provides products and services that enable catalogers to distribute direct mail solicitations. The brand that published this article is Multichannel Merchant, co-sponsor of the ACCM conference, formerly known as "The Catalog Conference", the "largest conference for catalog, internet and multichannel merchants".

These are odd times ... organizations that have made millions of dollars of sales/profit on the backs of healthy catalogers now publicly belittle the very brands they profit from.