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Wednesday 24 March 2010

I'm sorry, I haven't a clue - but I'm not alone


The other day I commented on what I consider two dumb, pretentious slogans: "I am Mercedes" - and "We are Santander."


They remind me of one of Noel Coward's very best lines. He was sitting in the Ivy with friends when the ludicrous actor Chuck Norris came up to his table, saying, "Hi, Mr. Coward, I'm Chuck Norris."

"Of course you are, dear boy," Noel replied, and carried on with his conversation.

Anyhow, just to show that stupid ideas span the generations I put up the picture of the same crappy idea as carried out in the'70's. Actually, it is a better execution, since the face of any Airline is the cabin staff.

But I digress - before I have even got started on what I planned to write about, which is Andrew Anderson, who you may recall I wrote about a while ago.

Andrew said he is going to prove that Twitter really does the business - at least I think he did, because like a lot of other people I haven't a clue. He send me regular messages about what he's doing, and I can see stuff happening twitter-wise - but I still haven't a clue.

So let me tell you my dream.

I want to make Twitter and stuff like that as easy to understand as I can, which is what I tried to do 28 years ago with the first (blessedly short) edition of Commonsense Direct Marketing.

I want to show how these media help do the only three things you have to do to succeed in marketing.

1. Get new customers.

2. Get them to spend more.

3. Get them to stay longer.

I often say my secret weapon is stupidity. If I can understand it, I can explain it - and everyone - even idiots like me - will understand.

That is Andrew's challenge.

"Show me" - as they say in Missouri.


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