Meet the Broker: Jim Chiavelli

Today we meet Jim Chiavelli, vice president of list brokerage at List Services Corp. for more than 10 years. He feels his background as a mailer at Taunton Press gave him special insight into the brokerage industry.

“Because of my publishing background I definitely enjoy working with publishers. I have a lot of experience with product launch efforts and I find that translates well into an ability to help clients venture into new market segments,” he says.

In addition, “I think I can draw on my years as a mailer both to help [clients] build effective mail plans and tweak creative for better results,” notes Chiavelli.

Chiavelli brokers lists for clients in special interest publishing and cataloging, as well as “a very large continuity mailer.”

For most of his time at Taunton, Chiavelli had been a client of LSC. “That’s sort of how I wound up here,” he says, adding that he was attracted to the challenge of helping mailers get to the right names the right way.”

This involves learning as much as possible about clients’ businesses and doing a lot of research to come up with the best possible list recommendations, he says.

He admits that the Internet has made this part of the job a little easier but has also helped speed up the pace.

“Everything is faster and you have access to so much more information than you did even 10 years ago when I got here,” he says.

As a result, some parts of the job have gotten a bit harder as time has gone on.

“I think the days are gone when recommendations just consisted of a stack of datacards,” he says. “Clients really expect more detailed recommendations and a lot more support information to go along with the datacards.”

Other things have moved ahead as well.

“I think another change is the growing capabilities of the major co-ops across categories beyond the traditional catalog strength,” Chiavelli says.

“Generally the co-ops for many years were thought of as a place for catalog names and not much else,” he continues. “And I see a trend definitely into publishers participating and successfully mailing co-op names.”

Of course, the largest challenge is getting through the economic downturn which Chiavelli says is “far and away the deepest and most widespread” he’s ever seen in his career.

“I think the pivotal time is going to be as we approach this upcoming holiday season,’ he says. “I think the question is going to be will marketers in general have enough confidence in an economic recovery to increase their spending in the third and fourth quarters of this year.”

Just the same, he sees a glimmer of hope as more test orders come in

When off the job, Chiavelli enjoys spending time with his wife reading, cooking, gardening and working around his Brookfield, CT home.

“And we share our backyard with a town park and the critters don’t know the difference,” he says. “We share our backyard with the coyotes and the wolves and the bobcats and the deer.”