The Drayton Bird Blog

"Lifestyles of the Not-So-Rich-and-Famous". And more political B.S. we will pay for - with out money or our lives

2012-02-01T16:21:00.000Z

Did you ever watch Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous? It was a TV show quite beyond parody run by Robin Leach, an Englishman with the strangest accent.

An eerie parade of boundless vulgarity, mostly in Hollywood, it was one of those things you just couldn't stop watching. Anyhow this not so rich and famous person had his flat broken into yesterday by British Gas who installed a meter because they said he hadn't paid his bill.

This was not impossible, as neither I nor my beloved read our post that carefully. But it was pretty strange because I paid them in January. But I wish they'd told me where they put the damn meter. No doubt all will be revealed when I ring them today. I have a ghastly feeling it's something to do with the credit card I used to pay them.

Europe has about as much idea about prudent management as me, but on a rather larger scale. In December The European Central Bank pumped €489 billion into the eurozone.

It is part of the longer term refinancing operation (LTRO) which gives banks cash at a low interest rate of 1% for three years..

The idea is that the European Central Bank gives banks cheap money, allegedly so they can help small businesses, but really to buy all the sovereign bonds nobody wants.

This is pouring bad money after worse.

John Bennett, who manages the Henderson European Focus Trust simply calls it "a bit of a Ponzi scheme". Bennett says 'What it has not removed is the chronic lack of growth in many parts of Europe.

'Economic policy in the developed world has followed one overriding principle and that is the avoidance of recession at all costs. Politicians hate them because they're scared of losing votes and jobs.
'The ECB and Merkozy may say one thing but all along they've been doing another thing. Just look at LTRO. If that's not quantitative easing, I don't know what is.'

Meanwhile Greece – in worse trouble than anyone - is the world's fourth-largest arms importer. Who are they at war with? Nobody. Who sells them most? Germany, the U.S. and France.

Who, one way or another will pay for this criminal activity? Taxpayers like you and me. But arms bring out the insanity everywhere, as noted in a splendid rant by Bill Bonner in The Daily Reckoning.

“We simply cannot continue to cut our defense budget if we are to remain the hope of the Earth,” says Mitt Romney.

Where do candidates get this sort of stuff? Who writes lines like that? Who takes them seriously?

According to Romney, the Earth itself longs for more US military spending.

His adversary, Newt Gingrich, says he thinks that Obama's Pentagon cuts will make the US as vulnerable to attack as it was before World War II.

But the Pentagon won't really have less money to spend. They're not really talking about cutting defense spending; they're talking about cutting projected military spending increases. Even after the 'cuts,' the US military will still be spending more than the next 10 biggest spenders put together.

All the candidates think the American people want war. Or...what?

Actually, Americans don't want war. The latest Pew Research polls show them more opposed to foreign military adventures than at any time in the last 15 years. They're more interested in getting a job...and protecting their retirements. Given the choice, they would probably want to see military spending cut back and the money put into their own pockets.

But they won't be given the choice. The system is rigged. Between them and the outcomes are 10,000 lobbyists and millions of zombies. This is why representative democracy doesn't work.

Decent people will generally have decent responses to decent questions. Put to a ballot, how would Americans vote?

Do these people actually READ their copy before they run it? And how does it get into print? What do you think?

2012-01-30T19:38:00.002Z

We just got back from Milan, which I guess is now the fashioncapital of the world. I was pretty stunned by how badly ordinary people dress.Not as badly as here or New York, but nothing special.

Wewere really there to pick up some bargains and visit friends. To get thebargains we went to Lugano where there is an incredible outlet with all the topEuropean brands. I saved a ton.

Wenever really change do we? I still take the most childish delight frombargains. And I still collect examples of outstandingly stupid copy, a task inwhich many kind people assist, including Andrew Gadsden, Tea MerchantExtraordinaire.

Recentlyhe sent me a classic: "Maximise your competitors' performance within minutes".Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we can't tell the difference between competitors and competitive. And oh what dire stuff we come upwith when we try to be creative before lapsing into cliché. Under thatunfortunate subject line was a weird picture of a pyramid emittingrays (maybe death rays?) with the line "Shining Light onTransparency".

Thenthe copy opens with (oh no, not again)"In today's highly competitive marketplace blah, blah, blah, blether,blether."

Ashame really as what they are offering - for the first time ever - is a freereport on what the reader's competitors are doing to get business in the publicsector. Why the hell they don't just say so in almost exactly those words is a mystery. As is anotherclassic Andrew sent me: ABC Racking - Shelving Your Ambitions.

Actually,that's not a mystery; it just shows yet again how people think some silly slogan is marketing - a delusion not confined to providers of pallets in theMidlands, but which pervades every level of marketing, from bibulousgolf-playing marketing directors and incomprehensible planners to coke-snortingjunior copywriters and art directors.

Incidentally, Andrew's firm - www.allabouttea.co.uk - which I've always fondly hoped is just Andrew and lots of girls - holds the Guinness record for the largest tea bag ever made. When I asked him which run-of-the-mill tea is best he said Yorkshire Tea. So I have bought it ever since.

Want to be a good writer? Amidst the oceans of drivel, some good sense.

2012-01-27T08:25:00.000Z

I have been amused lately by the torrent of messagesfrom crooks promising to make anyone a best-selling author in two shakes of adog's tale.

I have not found it that easy.

One of my books, Commonsense Direct and DigitalMarketing, has been sellingsteadily around the world since 1982, but it wasn't easy to write.

I spent a month trying to get going and failed completely. Then Ihad another go a year later and it took 6 weeks frantic typing followed by acouple of months of editing.

Revising it repeatedly has been a nightmare because it is fairlyeasy to write something long, then cut it, but very hard to write somethingshort and expand it.

But I had no choice. In 1980 the computer was only used by cleverpeople at places like The Readers Digest; the word database was rarelyheard. And as for the Internet - what was that? Text marketing? There wereno mobile phones.

So that explains why what was a slim volume has - like direct marketing - swollen until its fifth edition is excellent for propping up tables and keeping doors open

One of the few people who writes intelligently about writing isRyan Healy.

I just read this in his blog: "Creativity thrives under limits, be they natural or imposed." Itreminded me of the reasons why in 1985 I sold my agency to Ogilvy& Mather when we had been talking to no less than eight other big adagencies.

David Ogilvy rang me up, which was vastlyflattering. They had great clients and I thought we'd get business thatway. They were nice people, which is as important as money. But a hugefactor was their work, at that time the best in the world.

The guiding spirit was their worldwide creativedirector, Norman Berry, who had once offered me a job when he was creativedirector of Young & Rubicam. He said something I have never forgotten: “Giveme the freedom of a tight brief”. Pretty much what Ryan says.

If I had written a brief for myself before I set about the great tome, I would have found it much easier. The title is often a brief. My second foray into business writing - How to write a salesletter that sells - was much easier for that reason. That, too, is still around after 25 years.

Bad work comes from bad briefs which is why in my seminars I talk a lot about the brief. It is hard to be entertaining on the subject, but I usually manage to raise a chortle or two.

The two books are available on Amazon at a sensible price, or autographed illegibly by me, for slightly more because I can't compete with Amazon. And if you want my jokes about briefing and other matters, you'll have to join me in Andalusia.

Ryan's blog is at http://www.ryanhealy.com/creativity-and-constraints/

I'm sorry - I just love this even though I've seen it before. Sent to me by Jeff Blenford

2012-01-23T16:05:00.004Z

Stress

I am not sure exactly how it works, but this is amazingly accurate.

The picture has 2 identical dolphins in it.

It was used in a case study on stress levels at St. Mary's Hospital, London .

Look at both dolphins jumping out of the water.

The dolphins are identical.

A closely monitored scientific study revealed that, in spite of the fact that the dolphins are identical .

A person under stress would find differences in the two dolphins.

The more differences a person finds between the Dolphins, the more stress that person is experiencing.

Look at the photograph and if you find more than one or two differences you need to go on holiday....

No need to reply, I'll be on holiday.

Never take life seriously

Nobody gets out alive anyway

A far better Bird than me - but sad mistakes spoil his efforts

2012-01-22T16:11:00.000Z

When you get to my age, unless you're one of the Army of the Smug (you know, those who stride along the street looking pleased with themselves) you start to wonder whether you've done much good with your life.

Well, at least one member of the Bird tribe has done a lot more good than me. He is John Bird, who founded The Big Issue, a magazine sold by street people as a better alternative to begging. A wonderful idea that has spread around the world. I envy him.

I buy the magazine, but not as often as I should. This is partly - believe it or not - because of the layout. For the first few years most of the mag was set in sans serif type with a lot of it reversed out. A deadly combination - proven to be almost impossible to read and comprehend.* More recently the type has usually been serif (far easier to read) but still with a lot of reversing out.

Design is a tricky thing, and most young designers are utterly unaware of what makes for easy reading. Nor are they aware of the observation of the great typographer Stanley Morison, who designed the Times face: "Any disposition of type that comes between the reader and meaning is wrong."

But they have just had a redesign. Whether this makes things better I don't know as I haven't bought it yet. However, since Dennis publishing are responsible I imagine it should be an improvement.

There is an excellent article, full of good sense, by Lucy Headley about the need to change - http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/blogs/lucy-handley/why-the-big-issue-brand-needs-a-rethink/3030458.article. Below the article is some good sense from a former vendor, too. I think John Bird's brilliant idea has never been marketed as well as it could be, and you can see why from the article and the comment.

That being said I just had a small fit when I saw an ad in The Week (a Dennis mag I read diligently) announcing the redesign.

The headline was "NO MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC WERE HARMED DURING THE MAKING OF THIS MAGAZINE." Oh dear, oh dear. That really is sad. Go to the back of the class.

There was a short cliché-strewn block of copy, starting with "All new magazine. Same old values." The whole ad reads like it was written by the caretaker at Dennis Publishing in about twenty minutes after a couple of pints.

There was the predictable wanky slogan: Journalism worth paying for. Why do so many fools think slogans are so important?

But there is also one rather clumsy sentence: "Your Big Issue seller has paid half the cover price of each magazine". Without clear explanation the significance of that is not that easily grasped. I'll lay money that even most of those who buy the mag are only vaguely aware of how it operates. More to the point, what about prospects?

That sentence, easily missed because nobody is going to read the copy after such a poor opening, sums up the very essence of John Bird's idea. The sellers do pay for the mag and sell it. The idea of those in distress helping themselves has enormous appeal. Who can decry it? Moreover The Week has God knows how many readers, and I wager they are disproportionately likely to be charitable.

That ad is a disgrace. Amateurs should never be let loose on something that affects so many lives.
What an opportunity missed to do some decent advertising that tugged at the heartstrings and opened the wallets of all those people!

And now I come full circle. It may not be like heart surgery, but time spent telling people how to create stuff that gets people to do something is well worthwhile.

*If you want to know what makes for design that works, I shall be talking about it in Spain during my copy weekend. Or you can read pages 311-18 of that excellent doorstop, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, written by a less worthy member of the Birds than John.

Why are you struggling? Really? With the results of an interesting poll

2012-01-21T16:12:00.001Z

As you may have noticed, I take perverse pleasure in reading the emails sent by the sundry charlatans who inhabit cyberspace.

A great many start with questions like the first at the top, and answer them with an easy solution and an appealing offer.

These solutions often have these things in common:

a) You won't have to work hard to become whatever it is - an instant guru, an acclaimed author, a sought-after public speaker, a brilliant copywriter, or whatever your brain tells you is clearly impossible, but you would like to believe is not.

b) The money will be incredibly good and you won't have to wait too long for it to arrive.

c) It is all achievable because this guy did it. Here is the touching tale of how he climbed from trailer park to mansion in months - and how you can too. Sometimes there is more than one guy, and maybe the guy is a lady.

d) You don't believe me? Come and watch this free webinar/interview/whatever.

e) Wow! My webinar/interview/whatever was "awesome". I was blown away. Far more people attended than I expected. Many enjoyed orgasms of pleasure. But I'm worried that you missed it, so here's another chance. But it won't be around for long, because I'm taking it down, so act now

If you don't recognise all these signs of a scam, there's another pretty good one.

It is when you get variations of the same message from lots of people, most of whom make money not by running a business but by selling off vacant lots in Promiseland to gullible mooncalves.

But you know all this, I hope, and my reason for writing was because of a poll on Linked-in about another reason you may be struggling. It asked business people if red tape was stifling their business. 83% said it was.

I have no idea what could be going through the heads of the remainder, but to give you a clue about the impact of regulation Italy, once the fastest growing economy in Europe, slumped into decline the minute it started applying European laws, especially on employment.

The same has happened and will happen as long as wildly different European countries are gripped by the manifold straitjackets imposed by bureaucrats in Brussels who have neither knowledge of nor interest in how or whether people make a living, and who answer to a parliament full of thieving rogues.

The U.K. is infested with hordes of busybodies prying into everyone's business. It also has the most complex tax rules in the world - so complex that an entire department is devoted to tax simplification. Really.

This is even though the tax authorities have arranged things so that businesses - and quite a few individuals - are legally forced to do nearly all the work.

Despite other people doing their jobs for them, so incompetent are the tax people that they are years behind.

One respondent to the Linked-in poll said, "The state should be holding your hand not beating you with a stick."

I disagree violently. If there is one thing besides red tape that kills initiative, it is expecting the state to hold your hand.

If the state were holding your hand when crossing the road, you would be run over. I do not want or expect the state to hold my hand. I just want it to get out of the way.

Reagan's joke about the most dangerous words in the world applies: "I'm from the government, I'm here to help you."

But I guess it's marginally better than "I'm a guru, I'm here to rip you off."

Something for the perceptive marketer to reflect upon

2012-01-20T17:10:00.001Z

If you receive my regular emails, you will soon receive news of my planned Copy weekend in Spain, but first let's see how your brain is working with this little test.

Forget for a moment all the guff you get sent about social media, brand-building and SEO, and concentrate on something worthwhile and meaningful at the end of your long week.

The picture you see was sent me by one of the towering intellectual powerhouses of marketing, my old friend and colleague Daz Valladares.

I have always seen Daz as a kind of mentor, and he certainly knows more about buying media than anyone I know.

But like all good marketers he is a keen and profound student of human nature. He instantly spots insights that go far beyond the ordinary, and this mould-breaking study of pictorial impact shows such a series of inisghts.

To understand marketing, you must understand people. Analysis of the picture can tell us a lot about how different people think.

For young men, it's a picture of a lady with a nice derriere but only the most observant will notice that she is crossing a street.

The really observant will notice that she is wearing a thong.

For older men, she appears to be a respectable woman - with noble buttocks - on her way to work.

The more jaded among them will imagine her naked.

Wiser men will ponder the presence of mind of the photographer to take the shot in the face of such beauty and be grateful that they shared it.

For half of the women, this is an ordinary woman who should not have left home dressed that way.

The other half will think she is a slut but wonder where she bought that blouse.

Older women will imagine the misery that the woman’s curves will cause by the time she reaches 50.

But only children, the extremely intelligent and the celibate will notice that the taxi is being driven by a dog.

If you are thinking of joining me in Spain in late March, I fear there will be nothing quite as insightful as that in store. But it should be good fun.

The wisdom of trees, why I’m not rich – and two bits of investment advice

2012-01-18T16:28:00.000Z

A couple of years ago – I think when I was speaking in Washington - I got to know Dan Roberts, who does cartoons featuring trees.

Don’t ask me how he came up with that idea – who knows what lurks in the minds of men?

Anyhow, here’s one of his creations with a useful thought.

Dan has also created a Guide to Investing, aimed at nincompoops like me who understand nothing about it.

If you’d like to know more, write to me - Drayton@draytonbird.com - saying investing. (I’m not his partner, by the way).

There are two good reasons why I’m not rich. The first is because my grandfather on my mother’s side lost all his money by making the wrong bets just before the crash of 1920. So instead of having a silver spoon in my mouth I had a rusk.

The second is that my last wife had an uncanny ability to spend. She even bought a house without telling me, followed by a swimming pool complex that cost more than the house. She also had an uncanny ability to part me from property when we divorced.

Both these seeming misfortunes have been good for me actually. Although I am naturally lazy I’ve had to work hard all my life; and bizarrely enough in recent years I’ve found myself writing a lot about money. To do so I have had to study finance and investment a little.

This brings me to two interesting thoughts that came up in the latest edition of The Motley Fool, which I follow because their copy is very good.One suggested that U. S. banks have taken such a battering lately that they might actually be a good investment.

It is a well-established rule that the stocks (and very often the experts) that have just done well tend to do badly in the succeeding year – and vice versa. So have a look and see what you think: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/01/15/why-bank-of-america-could-be-the-dows-biggest-winn.aspx.

The other - in the same edition, suggests that as the Euro is about to fall to bits, this is a good time to cash in by shorting it.

As far as I can make out, my grandpa committed to buy cotton at a high price when he should have committed to sell it at a low one – or something like that.

In praise of hard work - and bursting a few falsely inflated balloons. Quoted from Bob Bly, whose words I have now been reading since the '70s.

2012-01-17T16:30:00.001Z

Business gurus are fond of saying, "Work smarter - not harder."

But I don't know ... I think there is something to be said for hard work.

Assuming you and I work equally smart, I'd think whichever one of us worked the hardest would come out ahead.Hard work is good for what ails you.

When your business or job isn't going the way you want it to, buckle down and redouble your efforts.You'll be more productive, and at least some of your extra efforts will be rewarded - and hard work will have saved the day.

Goethe wrote, "Whoever strenuously endeavors, him we can rescue".Combine hard work with persistence - never giving up - and the odds of you getting the result you want increase geometrically.

Ironically, a lot of people who work hard like to pretend that they don't.A famous Internet marketer, in promoting his programs, boasts about how you can make a six figure income in Internet marketing with hardly any work.But I happen to know that this guy works at least 12 hours a day, 6 days a week - and often late into the night.

A famous copywriter is pictured lounging in his pool in a magazine profile of him. Yet he seems to be continually at his PC banging out successful ad after successful ad for his clients.

Most things that are worth having or achieving require hard work. If they were easy, everyone would have them.

Hard work alone does not guarantee success. You also have to work smart, of course.But if you are not willing to put your nose to the grindstone, your chances of failure are large indeed.

Business or career floundering? Not where you want it to be?Work twice as hard. You may get twice the results.

Was I right about Tesco's folly on Saturday? Or was it just more Bird Blether?

2012-01-16T08:21:00.000Z

You probably take a rest from the tyranny of the internet on Saturdays, but as a helpless motor-mouth I often find something to talk to thin air about.

Such was the case two days ago. There was a big brouhaha in the investment world when for the first time in 44 years Tesco issued a profit warning and their shares dropped 16%.

After my last divorce I have no money to invest, but I do follow what goes on. That’s because I have clients in this area, because I’m interested in almost everything under the sun and for a personal reason I mentioned at the start of my Saturday piece.

Anyhow in that piece I suggested Tesco’s sales drop was due to three crass errors, all to do with marketing. You can see what they are if you look at what I wrote.

Eight days before the profitwarning Tesco’s Chief Operating Officer (with others) sold a load of shares andmade a tidy profit. Tesco say this was not illegal as he didn’t know what wasabout to be announced. All I can say is pull the other one: it’s got bells onit.

If someone at the top of a large sophisticated organisation doesn’t have the figures and projections at his fingertips, either he is incompetent or they are - or both. It is fifty years since Ifirst worked on a retail account – the long gone Hope Brothers - and evenas a humble copy group head I knew the weekly figures on my ads.

If what that man didwas not illegal, then it should be. This is precisely the sort of thing that makes people build tent slums outside cathedrals. It is high time the people who run things in this country stopped treating us all like idiots. And more than high time the Financial Services Authority focused on the big things rather than poodling about with small details in direct mail copy so as to make it incomprehensible.

One of the best booksabout investment – and human nature – is ExtraordinaryPopular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841) by Scottish journalist Charles MacKay. Ifyou read that and Reminiscences of aStock Operator (1923) thefictionalised biography of investmentwizard Jesse Livermore you will know more about the subject than mostinvestors.

You will also conclude that much investment is driven byhysteria, that the 16% drop is crazy and that Tesco is a good stock to buy. Tesco chairman Sir Richard Broadbent has just spent £100,000 doingso.

But be careful. A recent Which? survey gave Tesco a customersatisfaction rating of 46% compared to Waitrose with 83%, Aldi with 72% andLidl with 68% followed by M&S, Morrisons, Asda and the Co-op, which was 46%.

When I was drafting thefirst edition of Commonsense Direct andDigital Marketing back in 1982 I was very impressed by a an article by Gordon Grossman,former head of marketing at our client TheReader’s Digest. It was headed “If your customer won’t make you rich, who will?”

Your customer can alsomake you poor.

Big Price Drop = Big Share Drop: Tesco’s three mistakes – all to do with marketing, and pretty ghastly, too

2012-01-14T13:47:00.000Z

I have always been interested in Tesco.

Back in 1962 in my first big job at Leo Burnett, London one of myaccounts was The Supermarket Association, and we were given a tour of a Tescobranch by the founder, Jack Cohen.

He was, like Alan Sugar, originally a market trader, which is a damngood training for business – or marketing as we now call it. You must buy well, sell well and watch your margins. What’s more you know almost immediately whether something will sell.

My dear, much-missedlate brother George started on the markets. He made his first money at 16 buying a load of fireworks cheapafter Guy Fawkes day, keeping them for a year then selling them on Ashton market before the nextGuy Fawkes day. He bought for a penny and sold for sixpence.

The other day Tesco’s shares took a beating when for the first timesince 1968 they issued a profits warning. Their new chief executive admits withadmirable honesty that this was because they changed their promotional approachand got clobbered.

I may be maligning them but I suspect this needn’t have happened. For methe first law of marketing is to test. A friend who worked for Revlon founderCharles Revson told me Revson used to test everything including price in anarea before he launched a product nationally.

It is hard to believe they tested their Big Price Drop promotion properlybefore they gave up the other promotions that were working well. Promotionspretty much identical to those which helped their competitors snatch businessfrom them – and which have worked for years.

Incidentally, I wager Big Price Drop is not as good as The Big Save. Iknow that because I am a copywriter, and I know that what something does for the customer (save) beats whatit is (price drop) every time. That tooka split second to occur to me, but if I had a big shiny office fitted out withhot and cold running planners and account handlers I could charge you, assumingI wrote nice long report, a few grand for it.

(As an aside, in 1961 the Metal Box Company, then a member of TheSupermarket Association, had a miniature supermarket on Baker Street wheremembers could test alternative packaging on real customers. Does anyone do thatnow?)

The second of Tesco’s ghastly marketing mistakes explains why instead ofgoing to their shop which is nearer, cheaper and with equally good quality I traipseoff to Sainsbury’s. It is called forgetting the customer is alwaysright.

I have written about this before, but it is important.

Two years ago I bought some bad fish from Tesco in Soho. When I went tothe branch near my King’s Road flat to complain, they said that since I hadn’tbought there, they weren’t interested.

Actually they were always bloody rude in that branch – slap in themiddle of one of the wealthiest areas in Britain. When I emailed Tesco about my“shopping experience” as they told me to on the receipt, nobody replied.

They haven’t explained three things to their staff, maybe because theyhave forgotten them themselves: who pays their wages, the need to do what youpromise and the value of a customer over time.

In a similar piscatorial tragedy at Sainsbury’s near me in Clifton, whenI complained they gave me my money back and a voucher for £10.I haven’t even bothered to use thevoucher, but the moral is obvious.

If the only thing that mattered to customers was value for money Tescowould be almost impossible to beat. But other things sometimes matter more – especiallybuying from people we like and who seem to like us. Tesco don’t.

The third ghastly marketing mistake is to do with reputation – PR.

When I read that Noel "Bob" Robbins, Tesco’s UK chiefoperating officer has profited by £44,000 through selling shares beforethe profit warning, I thought there was a couple of misprints. Surely it must be Noel“Rob” Robbings.

The Financial Services Authority says directors must not buy or sellshares in their company while in possession of unpublished, price-sensitiveinformation. Does anyone seriously think the guy who runs the businessdoesn’t know what’s happening to sales, margins and profits? If so, heshouldn’t be operating anything more important than a check-out.

Never have corporate ethics (if that is not an oxymoron) have been undersuch scrutiny. I am currently working with a client who helps firms in thisarea.

Having your chief operating officer sell shares just before a profit warning suggests a) yourdirectors are a bunch of rip-off artistsb) your compliance department is up the creek and c) the man supposed to run your business is a serious liability.

May I end by making a self-interested point? What this storydemonstrates is a sad lack of understanding of several important aspects ofmarketing.

It is not enough, if you wish to succeed on a significant scale, tounderstand just one part of marketing. You must try to understand all of them.And that understanding is what I try to convey in my Commonsense Marketing programme,yours to try for a month, free.

Will this kind of short-sighted behaviour grow in the recession? Plus some advice from Dale Carnegie

2012-01-11T18:21:00.000Z

I'm sorry, but it is not enough to have messages that sell. You need to know what makes them sell, otherwiseyou’re never in true control of your marketing.

A friend whose agency suffers from having me as chairman told me a story this morning that makes the point.

One of my clients has just done the "can you give us the artwork for the ad you did so we can stick it on our system" trick, then informed me he will be giving it to the media agency to do the artwork so he can save money.

This is the guy who we did an ad for previously that tripled the response rates compared to the free ads created by the same media agency and turned £350k of media spend into £1.5m of sales.

This seems a bit short-sighted, to say the least. If they didn't have a decent ad to start with no one would be making any money.”

This sad tale reminded me of a client who did the same dirty on me 30-odd years ago – also in a recession. You won’t be surprised that he found his natural calling and now runs a bank.

Anyhow, I tried to console my friend.

The client and his media agency clearly don’t know what makes ads work otherwise their ads would have been doing OK before. So eventually one of two things (maybe both)will happen.

1. The client and/or the agency will start getting bored with the ad and try to “improve” it. Almost invariably in doing so they will miss out something essential or add something unwise

2. The winning ad will run out of steam eventually and they won’t know how to create another.

However, I think this kind of thing will be on the increase in the next year or five, which is all the more reason to know what works, what doesn’t and why - whether you're the client or the agency. Otherwise when things go wrong you have no idea what to do.

That is why in my Commonsense Marketing programme I analyse work and tell you what makes it tick. I usually talk about stuff I wrote myself, because, as Shakespeare put it, “I can but speak of that which I do know".

But I also interview people who have succeeded and get them to explain what worked for them (and what didn’t). They are the only ones who can tell you.

One or two people who subscribed to the previous Commonsense have asked me if this is different.Well, as you will see if you go here, it is mostly new material.

But there is a very good reason for looking at old material again. You forget most of what you read or see almost immediately.That is why at the start of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” you are asked to read each chapter twice, make notes and underline things that interestyou.

And it's why I still pick up Claude Hopkins Scientific Advertising and find things I'd forgotten ...and I've been reading it for over 43 years.

Interesting new development in corporate waffle - plus a free offer

2012-01-10T20:37:00.000Z

I have noticed lately a slight change in marketing bullshit.

For quite a few years marketers have been passionate. Passionate about all manner of stuff, it seems, except the thing normal people associate with passion, which from memory I seem to recall quite fondly is sex.

An amazing number are passionate about food, which may explain why there are so many wobbling blobs of adiposity taking up more than their share of airplane seats and decorating public places.

But is passion being replaced by inspiration? Sainsbury's want me to be inspired to cook. English Heritage has an entire campaign just called Inspired! (Note the exclamation mark: very creative, must have cost a few sleepless nights to some up with that).

The Olympics (of which I am heartily sick months in advance) have a campaign called Inspire, sadly bereft of any creative punctuation. This campaign "enables non-commercial organisations across the UK to link their events and projects to the London 2012 Games in an official scope"

What the hell do they mean "in an official scope"? Why can't these fools write in English, or at least hire someone who can?

Anyhow, the other day I noticed that the Harley Street Clinic has a big sign outside saying "Inspired to Care". I imagine this is because some oily consultant told them they needed some "marketing", then conned them into thinking that means plastering their building with fatuous drivel.

I lived on Harley Street for seven years, and I only remember one thing about what inspired the people there, which was told me by an distinguished lawyer. "I never knew a doctor who wasn't more interested in money than in medicine". Not long afterwards a doctor made the same remark about lawyers, so one doesn't know what to think.

I don't mind people wanting money, but I wish they wouldn't come out with all this patronising crap. If they were just inspired to care they'd be working in the NHS. They probably like doing what they do, feel it's worthwhile and do it well but like to get paid tons and tons of cash in exchange.

Me too, which reminds me: I really must urge you to have a free preview of my newly improved and tarted up Commonsense Marketing programme.

I have been inspired to launch this as an alternative to the amazing deluge of lies I get every day from sundry sharks. It runs every month for a year and starts with - among other things - something I have never done before. It's a step-by-step analysis of the briefing method I use.

I urge you - passionately - to go and see a simple little site that tells you all about it, at http://draytonbirdcommonsense.com/bespoke/preview1.html

Why not go there now? You can give the whole thing a go for a month without paying a bean and see what you think.

What can you lose? It won't get you to No 1 on Google, or get you $3,000 an hour without being able to sign your own name, but quite a few people have become surprisingly successful after taking my advice.

Some have made millions, so they say. Why not you?

This put me in a good mood for the year ahead

2012-01-06T09:30:00.004Z

I had quite forgotten how hilarious Private Eye can be.

Ever since they started they’ve run poems by E. J. Thribb(17½) but the current one is the funniest I can recall.

In Memoriam KimJong-Il, North Korean Leader

So. Farewell

Then

Kim Jong-

You were

Kim Jong-

Then you were

Kim Jong-

Very-il

Now you are

Kim Jong-

Dead

Now we just have to hope we'll see a few on the deaths of a few other evil bastards. Assad, Putin, Omar Al-Bashir, any religious maniac of any persuasion - and so on

What's in store in 2012? Odd language leads to pretty useless advice - and my touchingly generous offer expires today

2011-12-31T12:38:00.001Z

Oneof the most profitable lines ever written was to sell the Kiplinger Letter. Itran for a good twenty years and read "Will there be more BOOM and moreINFLATION ahead?"

Itworked because we all want to know what's going to happen; but I can save you alittle trouble. There is no boom coming your way but a whole lot of inflation,because that's what happens when you print money, whatever fancy name you callit.

Thisis prompted by something I saw in an e-mag called "London LovesBusiness" which read: Marketniches set to explode in 2012, according to the UK's most successfulentrepreneurs.

Strangephraseology: niches do not explode, but I wanted to know what various expertsthought. The answer is that most of what followed was a series ofself-interested plugs by sundry individuals who think their business is goingto do just great.

SteliosHajimathingy thinks his easy businesses will go just great, except he didn'tmention easyJet because he's having a row with them. A couple of guys in thedating business think people are going to want to leap into bed with each othermore.

Andwould you believe a property man thinks you could do well in prime property? A man who's been trying to make hydrogen batteries reckons he's finally crackedit. There were a couple of investment schemes I would be very careful about.And (surprise, surprise) mobile ads are doing well and will do better.

Thewhole piece was a big con. Most of the people were not London's most successful entrepreneurs. And other than Will King, the King ofShaves man and a guy who runs virtual gyms, all the advicewas just flat-out self-promotion.

Ilike the idea of virtual gyms. I could stop all my push-upsand crunches and just imagine I'm exercising. Actually, that's not unlike what most people end up doing after they join a gym: they go two or three times then quit.

Don'tlaugh, though: research I read somewhere says that just imaginingyou're exercising actually works.

Changingthe subject a little, do you ever find yourself astounded at the wayyou know you should do things - but you don't? I do, often.

That's why I spent much of yesterday making audio recordings. Ihave known for years that people like to listen to stuff in the car or while doingother things like the cleaning (which I do, believe it or not). But I havealways put stuff out in video or written form. Stupid.

Anyhow three hours of wit and wisdom is now in the can ready forJanuary. If you're one of those who has joined EADIM you'll start getting them.If you're not (I may have mentioned this before) well, the £600 saving dealends when the year ends. Just a few hours from now.

After that, the New Year - no boom, but plenty of busts - iscoming your way. In the deathless words of Bette Davis, "Fasten your seatbelts. We're in for a bumpy ride." .

How to have a Happy New Year: two options – plus thoughts on Special Relationships and General Folly

2011-12-30T19:06:00.000Z

If you follow politics in the same bemused way as I do youmay find yourself chortling from time to time at how British politicians harpon about a special relationship between the U.S. and the U.K.

This certainly existed during World War 2, when a wonderful arrangementcalled Lend-Lease enabled us to stay afloat with the help of U.S. supplies thatwe eventually had to pay for - which pretty much ruined us.

Nowadays it seems to consist of British politicians a)competing to see which can lick the arse of the current president mostvigorously – see Blair-Bush; and b) imitating the sillier ideas from overthere.

Under the heading of General Folly who commands MajorDisaster, Bush had a “Drugs Czar”. This is what they call gesture politics, andhad about as much effect on drug taking as Prohibition had on boozing. So, ignoringa few more serious matters, Cameron has a Shopping Czar called Mary Portas.

Her“mission” which she accepted with alacrity - think of the publicity, darlings! - is to Save the High Street. How fatuous isthat? Is she going to ban online shopping and blow up all the supermarkets? Andwhy isn’t she called a Czarina, by the way?

In the mad, mad world it seems by some mechanismI cannot comprehend that if people spend, spend, spendmore on shopping the economy will be just fine. I can’t understand why pissingaway money on rubbish is good for us all, but no worries: Bill Bonner in Money Week has just pointed out why thiswon’t happen.

It is because people don’t have the money. Or rather the wrong people have the money, to be more precise.

In thelast year, British CEOs increased their salaries, but certainly not their competence, by 49%. Ordinary workersgot 2.6% more. That is less than they lost by inflation. In the U.S, one obscenelygrasping CEO paid himself $145,266,190.

(Of course, he was in the “health-care”or rip-off industry. Sickening, isn't it, how bad health is in the U.S. considering how much it costs? In the most comprehensive survey I know of, the U.S. came 37th out of 37 nations - though costs are more than double any other nation's.)

Sadly, though there is only so much money these egregious wretches can piss away on vulgar yachts and overpriced modern art.

So the question you might like to ask before my next commercialis this: if ordinary people don’t have as much money to spend, how can you make sure youget more than your fair share?

It's simple really. f you want to have any kind of decent New Year at all, you’dbetter get better at marketing. A lot better.

I have two suggestions for you - then I won’t bore you muchmore for at least 24 hours.

1. Grab one of the last handful of seats at EADIM, saving yourself £600.

2. Keep your eyes open in the first week ofJanuary, when I shall offer you a full year of marketing advice.

This will include a description, in riveting detail, of HowI Came Back From The Dead.

Hard to beat that, eh?

Shooting cows and sparing milkmaids, or how to put the cart before the horse: an expert demonstrates. And why I’m ending this blog shortly

2011-12-28T15:00:00.000Z

Years ago when I whizzed around the world telling people whatto do (a role for which I was astoundingly unfitted) I arrived one sunny morningat a Canadian airport.

The office head met me and drove me into town. He had quite aproblem. The office was losing money hand over fist. I had no idea what tosuggest but I thought maybe the trick would be to get rid of a few people. Butwho?

So I asked him about office numbers. He had a small creativedepartment – the people who put together the ads and mailings and so on. Therewere somewhat more account handlers – the charmers who deal with the clients.And there were even more in the accounts department – they send out the billsand keep score financially.

I said, “Well, David Ogilvy says you should never have moremilkmaids than cows. You have that - more account handlers than creative people. But you have even more people countingthe buckets of milk, which is pretty amazing. See what happens if you get thebalance right.”

So he did, and the business went on to prosper – as did he.He is now the worldwide head of that particular organisation.

There is obviously a hell of a lot more to what he achieved thanchanging the numbers. He is very good blues harmonica player, for one thing. But I was reminded of all this when I heard what theyare up to at the BBC.

Mark Thompson – he who gets paid well over five times as muchas the Prime Minister – has a “programme” or “initiative” called “DeliveringQuality First”. Pardon me while I throw up before explaining that they are doingthis by shooting cows and sparing milkmaids.

They are getting rid of over 2,000people in programme-making (cows) but sparing all the executives (milkmaids).There is no shortage of milkmaids at the BBC; in fact so many there are 1,800job titles that include the words manager or management.

I have stolen most of that from the Oldie magazine, which also reveals that despite all these managers,analysts, officers, architects, executives and advisors one senior correspondentrevealed recently that “it is incompetently managed from top to bottom.”

This story reminds me of one of Evelyn Waugh’s best jokes,delivered after Randolph Churchill had had his appendix out. He remarked how extraordinaryit was that they had managed to remove the one part of Randolph that was notmalignant.

Lastly, I have noticed one thing in life – demonstrated bythe BBC story – that far too often people mistake change for improvement.

Thepeople who run this blog have introduced improvements which make it much harderfor me, so I’m going to move it elsewhere shortly.

A gorgeous lady reveals why some people will be having a Merry Christmas - at your expense. Plus a funnier European joke

2011-12-22T10:47:00.000Z

As all but the blind and stupid know, the news is increasingly brought to us by glamorous lady newsreaders.

The reason may lie in research I saw 40 odd years ago into what attracts the eye. This may well help you in your marketing, by the way.

Men look more at women than at men, and women look more at women than men, but they look at babies even more.

This may explain a few relationship mysteries to us males, but that is not my purpose here.Go and check out http://dotsub.com/view/01ad2718-073c-474a-ac40-c7a72e199d55. It will explain one reason why most people in this country (and I suspect many others too) are not keen on the joys of the European community.

Another is that 45% of the community's money goes to subsidising two groups. First, rich farmers who don't need the money. Second, poor farmers who need the money because they are not very efficient ... and get it because they are large in number, many are in France and Germany, and they all vote.

After that, a far better European joke.

Some years ago a small rural town in Spain twinned with a similar town in Greece.

The mayor of the Greek town visited the Spanish town.

When he saw the palatial mansion belonging to the Spanish mayor he wondered how he could afford it.

The Spaniard said "You see that bridge over there? The EU gave us a grant to build a two-lane bridge, but by building a single lane bridge with trafficlights at either end this house could be built".

The following year the Spaniard visited the Greek town. He was simply amazed at the Greek Mayor's house - gold taps, marble floors - the lot.

When he asked how this could be afforded the Greek said; "You see that bridge over there?"

The Spaniard replied "No."

And finally, a Swiss-Welsh joke.

There is great stress placed on retaining the ancient language of Wales, which I applaud.

It does give rise to oddities, though, as they have made up words for things that didn't exist 700 years ago - e.g. toilet is toiled, or ty bach, and paper is papur.

Anyhow, after that boring stuff you don't really need to know, I was entertained to receive the other day this message:Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda.

My Welsh is not what it was - I went to school in Wales, but only learnt rude words - but this means Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Why the sender, who works for a Swiss firm, imagines all his readers speak Welsh, I have no idea, but I would like to pass that message on to all readers in their respective languages - even my resident hissy old queen, Shannon O'Hara.

Putin would applaud the way America is going - and a tale about the joys of equality

2011-12-21T10:03:00.003Z

While you were out celebrating, the fires of liberty were being extinguished, no doubt on the principle of "yes we can".

The U.S. Congress, abetted by Obama, has passed a Bill that means you can be arrested, thrown in jail, "questioned" for any reason or no reason at all.You don't have to be charged with anything. Don't waste time asking for your lawyer - or anyone else. They don't have to allow it, any more than they need read you your rights or provide any evidence.

And I might add that they also feel they have the right to do much the same thing anywhere in the world - to you or me. All this brings to mind nothing so much as the Spanish Inquisition, Stalin's Purges and Hitler's Germany.

***

My friend Andy Owen sent me a parable which may be made up to attack Obama on the laughable grounds that he is socialist - but which bears thinking about.

Allegedly an economics professor at a local college announced that although he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class.

The class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment on this". Everyone agreed.

"All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade, so no one will fail and no one will receive an A:.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.The students who studied hard were upset. The students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little, had studied even less. And the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too, so reduced their efforts too. The second test average was a D.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased, as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings - and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail, because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

From, this the following was concluded

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for, without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work, because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

I do not think Obama is a socialist. I think he is, like almost all politicians, something of a shit.Recently, in an effort to curry favour with the right, he has backtracked on his promise to introduce a more humane immigration plicy.

In fact more people are being deported and families being torn apart under his legislation than were under Bush.

I want to be a pygmy instead of pretending to be a giant. Also, a little embarrassment - and your advice, please

2011-12-18T09:20:00.002Z

After Cameron's little squabble in Europe Mr. Clegg stamped his feet and said "We risk being a pigmy on the world stage".

What an EXCELLENT prospect. I love the idea of being a pigmy nation - like Switzerland or Norway. Sarkozy, being a genuine pigmy, naturally feels the other way round.

Mr. Clegg seems to have an almost unnatural desire to grab hold of the wrong end of the stick and beat everyone up with it.

Offhand the only sensible idea I can recall from this government is to restore tax breaks to people who marry. Clegg says it is a bad idea to “preserve the 1950’s marriage in aspic”.

As anyone with eyes to see and brains to use knows, one of our biggest nightmares today is teenage delinquency. And as weall (save Mr. Clegg and a few PC crackpots) also know,oceans of research and statistics show that children whose parents stay together are, on average, happier, less at risk and do better in life than the reverse.

One of my own greatest regrets is that my first marriage broke up.God save us from posturing fools after short term advantage at our families' expense.

***

This morning I woke up, as usual, absurdly early, to find a message from a client I am seeing on Monday for the first time. She wanted me to bring some samples of my copy for a meeting.

Oh God, I'm fearfully busy and it's years since anyone asked that. I've been getting away with it on wild claims and all-round waffle. I had to send an assorted batch I could scrape together from current projects and bits and pieces.

Well that got the shattered old brain creaking, and I had an idea. Tell me what you think - usual address, Drayton@Draytonbird.com, or comment here.

I currently have four projects lined up, and each might benefit.

1. There's the Spanish copy day at the end of April and beginning of March. We're just negotiating on hotels, but it looks like Malaga . A U.S. attendee suggested that while we were there I might as well add a second day.

3. There's Australia at the end of February.

3. There's EADIM on October 4th (I think).

4. There's also the relaunch of my Commonsense Marketing Series in January.

Well, I suddenly recalled that decades ago I used to do copy clinics where people aired their problems - usually one at a time, face to face - and I would give my views.

It was very popular. So I thought of doing the same thing within one, two or even all the things I just listed. I also thought of getting my partner Al involved. I always ask him to critique my stuff and he's full of good sense besides knowing more about the magic of the worldwide interweb than me.

Tell me what you think, if you're not too hung-over or busy wondering what the hell to give little Elspeth for Christmas (we did all our shopping yesterday, ha ha).

By the way, people haven't all coughed up yet, but we now have over 30 of the EADIM seats spoken for. Less than 10 to go. I greatly fear there'll be none left by New Year.

I had a most interesting "yes" from a Russian designer this morning. His site is full of highly original stuff. Not sure it sells well enough, though.

***

My dear friend Panda sent me this. I love it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGgKwggLaWw

Well, well, well. Goodbye Magna Carta. Our gutless government did it to us. Now U.S. citizens can have their freedom removed. Plus Dumb-Dell

2011-12-17T09:04:00.010Z

I read what follows this morning, so I have no idea whether it has come about.

However, I do know that years ago Tony "I gave Gadhafi a big wet kiss" the Bliar's flabby excuse for a government allowed the U.S. to whisk our citizens away and stick them in jail without trial or proof.

Memories are short, so you may not recall that this was part of Bambi Blair's campaign to insinuate his tongue as far up George W. Bush's arse as far as it could go. Anyhow, what goes around comes around, and it seems a Bill has come before the U. S. Senate that defines the whole of the United States as a ‘battlefield’ and allows the US Military to arrest American citizens in their own backyard without charge or trial.

“The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president — and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. The power is so broad that even US citizens could be swept up by the military, and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself,” writes Chris Anders of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

Under the ‘worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial’ provision of S.1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which is set to be up for a vote on the Senate floor this week, the legislation will ‘basically, say in law, for the first time, that the homeland is part of the battlefield,’ said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who supports the bill.

The bill was drafted in secret by Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) before being passed in a closed-door committee meeting without any kind of hearing. The language appears in sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA bill.

“I would also point out that these provisions raise serious questions as to who we are as a society and what our Constitution seeks to protect,” Colorado Sen. Mark Udall said in a speech last week. ‘One section of these provisions, section 1031, would be interpreted as allowing the military to capture and indefinitely detain American citizens on US soil. Section 1031, essentially, repeals the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 by authorizing the US military to perform law enforcement functions on American soil. That alone should alarm my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but there are other problems with these provisions that must be resolved.’

This means Americans could be declared domestic terrorists and thrown in a military brig with no recourse whatsoever. Given that the Department of Homeland Security has characterized behavior such as buying gold, owning guns, using a watch or binoculars, donating to charity, using the telephone or email to find information, using cash and all manner of mundane behaviors as potential indicators of domestic terrorism, such a provision would be wide open to abuse.

“American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely, without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?” asks Anders.

That report is taken from The Daily Reckoning. What follows is taken from the Bird postbag.

I have commented before on the rank stupidity of Dell's marketing, which is almost entirely based on discounting, a pretty good way to tell buyers your stuff isn't good enough to sell on its merits.

They do also have some copy, though. For instance, in an insert with my copy of The Week: "Give the gifts you wish you could hold on to."

When writing or reviewing copy it is wise to ask yourself questions like what the hell it means, and does it make any kind of sense. Do you hug your little computer to your chest? Are you worried that you might drop it down the toilet? Are you getting paid to write lines like that? Really? Why?

Another line in this insert is “Give the gifts they’ll love to open”. Why not “I saw Mummy kissing my Dell computer”?

I watched a programme about Steve Jobs last night, presented by that man who looks like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings. I can just imagine what Jobs would have said about such rubbish.

Anyhow, the other thing interesting about Dell's leaflet is that they have one in every issue of The Week - but with no way I could see of properly measuring the results. Dumb.

Incidentally, I see this blog is being regularly reported in Facebook as abusive. What took so long?

Well, knock me down with a feather, he's at it again! Does the devil have all the best tunes? Plus the world's silliest offer

2011-12-15T05:00:00.006Z

Yesterday I was on about the floppy-haired wunderkind J. P.Maroney.

He looks impossibly young to be so good. In only a few short weeks he has offered to turn me into a world-class public speaker, stick me in his Genius Incubator and make me a brilliant writer.

Step aside, Mozart, Dickens and Einstein, this THE man.

And as if those prodigies were not enough, in the middle of the night he whacked out another one.

He is so impressed with my progress - even without my having taken any of these astounding no-brains-talent-or-work-needed courses - that he wants to hire me!!!

Yes, gentle reader. I'm about to join the elite! Here it is, word for word. His invitation for this life-transforming and bank account draining opportunity starts

I want to HIRE YOU... [webinar explains all] Then it goes on:

Seriously...

I want to hire you.

My buddies want to hire you.

And, this new webinar on Friday
explains EVERYTHING about this
IMMEDIATE OPENING.

I'll share "How To Go From ZERO
To $10,000.00 Per Month Online
-- From A Standing Start!"

REGISTER and join me.

12:00 Noon Eastern
11:00 AM Central
10:00 AM Mountain
9:00 AM Pacific

I'll show you how to crank up and
start churning in the cash -- FAST.

So, if you haven't decided on a
specific online business to start
or run then join me on Friday for
this fresh, new webinar.

FACT is...

In most cases I can ONLY teach
something ... but I cannot
guarantee that someone will go out
and succeed.

--------------
THIS IS DIFFERENT!
--------------

If you follow my recommendations
in Friday's online workshop ...
I can GUARANTEE without hesitation
that you WILL get customers --
FAST!

In fact I MAY BECOME YOUR FIRST
CUSTOMER (how's that for cool)?

REGISTER HERE

What SPARKED this idea:

Another marketer interviewed me
one time and asked me to answer
this question...

"JP, if you suddenly lost your
whole business, your list, your
products, your clients, your
expert status ... and if you had
to start over with NOTHING ...
what would you do to QUICKLY get
up to turning $10,000.00 per month
REALLY FAST!"

I'm going to teach you that plan,
in detail on this RARE workshop
on Friday.

I guarantee...

Your life will NEVER be the same
after you ATTEND THIS WORKSHOP.

REGISTER NOW!

Cheers,

JP

PS: Over the last few years, I've
met a lot of people like you who
are basically starting with
NOTHING, and want to get up and
running making real money online.

They don't have a product, don't
have a list, don't have any real
"sellable" expertise (or at least
they think they don't).

This is ONE OPTION that
practically ANYBODY can do.

It's not some "MAGIC BULLET" that
pours money into your bank account
without you doing any work.

But, if you don't mind working a
little, and following a system,
you can make some SERIOUS CASH --
FAST.

I'll teach you THE SYSTEM on
Friday -- 12:00 noon eastern.

REGISTER HERE

Well, I was just about to join when I got an even better opportunity from Robert Grant of Crowd Conversion, another of my favourites. This one, full of Oriental Promise, is headed

$150 ninja software for nothing (open up)

I simply had to share this cool valuable free tool with you.

My friend Jonathan over at Heistit.com is letting you "legally steal" his $150 software.

This ninja software bangs out the coolest looking web pages at the click of a button.

Seriously, it's "cut and paste" easy. I wish I could tell you more but you'll have to.

Click Here To Grab This $150 Ninja Software For Free - No Catch, High Value.

Warmest

Robert

Isn't that just awesome, Little Grasshoppers?

And to answer the question about the devil at the top, the answer is, "Very often, yes." You can learn a lot from these guys. The video in Mr. Grant's landing page is brilliant. Have a look. It's got every trick in the book

http://www.heistit.com/ub

If for some reason you find yourself sceptical or even wondering why they don't offer to add 4" in to your dong, you can always try the other way to get rich, which is called hard work.

P. S. Maybe you'd be safer watching paint dry. If that appeals, go here http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/884763-first-ever-world-watching-paint-dry-championships-to-be-held-in-uk.

Today's great promise: writing for trailer-park f***wits. Watch out J. K. Rowling! Also, can you walk on water?

2011-12-14T08:23:00.015Z

As faithful readers know I am an eager follower of the life and works of J. P. Maroney, a man so brilliant he can turn a Norwegian Elkhound into a best-selling author in 3 days flat.

This morning he writes to me promising all my troubles are over:

"If you want to know how to sell a ton of books and turn your books into client-getting marketing tools for your business then you're going to love my new Author Coaching Club ... Wait 'til you see all the cool stuff I'm giving you. Luv'it!

PS: Did you know something like 8 outta 10 people hope to some day write a book?"

Pretty inspirational stuff, eh? Maybe after all these wasted years I should forget scribbling away in English or sending off for Jeff Walker's Miracle Window Cleaner and Everlasting Traffic Gobbler and give my money to J. P. Because the sad fact is, I am one of the 8 outta 10 and I find "authoring" hard work.

In case you don't know it, J. P. is also "Mr. Monetizer" and just a few short weeks ago was offering me the chance to sit inside his Guru Incubator, having failed to get me to become a world-class public speaker in 37 seconds flat.

What a writing style the man has, though I am a tad disappointed that he didn't fit in the all-purpose teenage/marketing guru adjective "awesome" in there, not to mention that catchy little phrase "I gotta tell ya".

Whilst waiting for his How to Become a Nobel-Winning Nuclear Physicist Without Getting Out of Bed course, I just got this inspirational message from someone with a Hotmail address who's never heard of targeting and is utterly unfamiliar with the concept of the paragraph.

We are seeking an experienced Real Estate Office Manager/Sales Manager/Realtors to manage the Real Estate department of our Company, to develop and grow our existing sales team and rentals department. Would you like to play a pivotal leadership role in an established and highly successful Real Estate business in your region, then this position is perfect for you.You will be responsible for managing the candidates and the candidate process, supporting a small team of consultants on a daily basis with their admin and back office functions allowing them and the business to achieve overall sales targets. Responsibilities will include: * Ad writing (SEEK and My Career) * Continually introducing talent to the business by: * Meeting with new candidates through ad response * Headhunting talent out of the market * Telephone screening * Candidate coaching * Achievement of your individual revenue budget * Assist a team of experienced consultants in achieving their budgets We will offer YOU: * Uncapped earning potential * An extensive training program * A network of established and experienced colleagues * Development and career opportunities You will be given all the tools needed to succeed including ongoing coaching and mentoring from the leadership team. This coupled with your demonstrated experience, passion for the industry sector and your huge willingness to learn and achieve, will ensure your success. Ideally you will come from a Property or Real Estate background, or a recruitment agency. Your approach must be professional and intuitive, with the ability to hit the ground running in a fast paced environment.

Not asking for a lot, are they? I must hit the ground running, dig out on the old pivotal leadership role mask - next to my Superman outfit in the loft - and meet their leadership team.

P. S. All that stuff about J . P. was just sour grapes. He has a magnificent head of hair, and you can learn a lot about parting fools from their money from his website.

Back home, to hail, a leaky roof and a deluge of local government piffle

2011-12-13T12:57:00.003Z

In New York the sun was shining. In Bristol it was pissing down. And in my flat it was going plonk, plonk, plonk into assorted buckets, bowls and pans.

Only the plants, which needed watering, have escaped.

Meanwhile in a website called London Loves Business it was raining jargon and cliché in the form of an ad from Harrow Council.

With the exception of property ads, recruitment advertising must surely be the worst.

But seriously, could anyone cram much more pretentious bosh into one small space than what follows? And what kind of person will apply? Someone who loves children? Or someone who talks bilge?

Here is the headline to the ad.

LSCB Senior Professional

Gripping, isn't it? It caught my eye because I had no idea what LSCB is. Nor, I bet do you.

More to the point, I suspect that anyone who does is probably divorced from the rest of humanity.

But if the headline was bad, just wait till you read the rest of the complacent self-praising disgraceful guff that follows

Support the groundbreaking new integrated Children’s Service in Harrow through innovative partnership working for the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board (LSCB).

Play your part in a new model

In early 2012, we will launch a brand new operating model for Children’s Services – a radical transformation driven by a complete system re-design. This will be a seamless, fully integrated multi-agency service with one point of contact and a true team around the family. Our visionary approach is based on the firm foundations of evidence, best practice and extensive consultation.

Residents, partners and employees have informed the model’s development every step of the way. Joining us now will give you an important say in the detail and the development of service delivery as we continue on an ambitious journey to become the country’s best performing Children’s Service.

We are looking for an experienced safeguarding professional to work within the Quality Assurance and Service Improvement service to ensure efficient operation of LSCB and sub groups. You will have a key role in ensuring the efficient operation of LSCB meetings, sub groups and time limited task groups.

Look, I don't want to worry you all, but is there any soul in there? Is there any feeling? And how would you feel if your child were being "safeguarded" by people who think and talk like that?

Unfortunately I am time-limited after my flight, so will say no more, except thank you to those who replied to my mention of the joys of EADIM.

I think we now have 13 places left of 40, but I am also brain-limited after the flight, so maybe I've got the numbers wrong.

Where to invest your marketing money, free audio series, IBM suggests where NOT to buy software, and meaningless promises

2011-12-11T13:45:00.012Z

A few people take the trouble to write to me and comment or suggest things, which I do appreciate.

Today my main challenge is to make a chili to poison the guests at my son Phil and his wife Megan's annual Christmas bash, but Robert Currey wrote to me about a (very good) blog by photographer Trey Ratcliff and asked what I thought.

Trey decided to measure the performance of his advertising in magazines - a blindingly obvious idea ignored by the fools in big firms who think marketing means just spraying money around at random with no regard to the results.

He concluded that print is now a waste of time. and we should throw everything on-line. Robert asked me if I agree. Here are some thoughts for you.

1. In the days back when I compared the ROI on advertising in trade mags with direct mail a couple of times. Direct mail did four times better. One reason, I think, is that most trade mags are tripe.

2. However, most advertising in mags is as bad as the editorial, so good ads work, as they shine out like good deeds in a naughty world.

3. Most people who use the internet haven't a clue and can't be bothered to study. It is NOT easy to understand. The water is muddied by thieving rogues who tell you all you need is either a) traffic b) good traffic c) be at the top of the Google rankings d) "my secret super launch formula" - that's made me a fortune out of mugs like you.

4. You must attract the right people - thousands of them; you must get them to give their details; you must follow them up with an endless series of messages - on auto-responder and otherwise - that are interesting, relevant and helpful enough to make them buy eventually. You must use all available channels (this one for example). A whole lot easier said than done when so few people can think clearly, write well, or even take the trouble to bloody count.

5. Direct mail is not dead. As more and more are lured on-line, it is still doing O.K. despite insanely high postal rates. So is door to door distribution.

6. Your prospects do not confine themselves to one medium. Nor should you. I am currently working on a worryingly wide range of stuff in many countries. Two clients sell new thinking to big business, another sells a home service, a fourth sells to collectors and investors, a fifth sells to people who want to improve themselves, a sixth sells to international travellers and a seventh sells to hobbyists, mostly ladies.

7. In no case are we using one medium, We are using SEO, auto-responder conversion techniques, video, direct mail and advertising, email, landing pages, advertising in trade and national press, co-operative deals and even van sides. All to multiple decision makers inside and outside the clients' firms.

I feel tired, which reminds me: a week or two back I offered a free cure for insomnia: a 10 part audio series on how to do decent marketing. I have been waiting for a decent mike to do it - time to start seeming vaguely professional.

The utterly useless twats in England who had one were taking over a month to deliver, so screw them. Be warned: they are (ha ha, very droll) a business partner of IBM called www.zoom4u.co.uk. IBM should be ashamed of themselves.

Don't go near them. Their idea of service includes the brilliant wheeze of having no phone number. I'm buying a mike here in New York and will do the recordings next week.

***

Politicians all over the world are crooks - but local ones are often worse than most. Here in New York one crook who has clearly had his hands in the till, big time, has managed to get off.

Back in the old U.K. with a quiet chortle, I read that Ken Livingstone, former mayor of London "pledges" to bring down London public transport fares by 7% if he is re-elected.

The chortle was the second of the day as far as he's concerned. He's written an autobiography that's promoted in posters as the man who tells it to you straight. What a comedian.

I don't know who is worse - him with all the crooked cronies he had around him - or Boris Johnson who in his first two years pissed away £9 million on "consultants". But I do know that every time I read the words "vow" or "pledge" a lie is not far behind.

***

Here's the blog I mentioned at the start http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpTYWNbXKzA

At last! One of my favourite jokes brought to life by a rip-off specialist -- or maybe he's a philanthropist. What do YOU think?

2011-12-06T21:03:00.003Z

By the time you read this I'll be winging my way across the Atlantic to sighs of relief here in the U.K. and moans of apprehension in the New York area.

A few moans from me, too, because when I see my son Phil I tend at some point to end up in a grand Irish bar in Soho the name of which always escapes me, but for some reason I think it's Italian.

Here's the joke, anyhow.

A researcher is asking a number of men (I have no idea why they were there) about their sex lives, and specifically how often the happy event occurs. "Who gets it every day?" he asks. Two raise their hands with smug grins. "And every other day?" Five happy souls raise their hands. "Once a week?" Fifteen, not quite so cheerful, confess to this.

And so it goes. As the intervals get greater, the happiness diminishes, until the researcher asks "Once a year?"

One little man man in the back row sticks his hand up, grinning all over his face.

"Well, you seem quite content," says the researcher.

"Tonight's the night!" cries the little man.

All this came back when I got an email from Steve Little with that very heading. He promises "a simple, easy to follow formula you can steal that is guaranteed to produce income for you" - and lots more in the same vein.

This reminds me of a story about the Duke of Wellington, then by far the most famous and recognisable person in England and perhaps Europe.

A man came up to him and asked, "Are you John Smith?"

"If you believe that you'll believe anything," replied the Duke.

The same I suspect applies to anyone who believes Mr. Little's promises.

I don't suppose he's worried though. There are many born every minute.

The Harlot's Progress - or The False Promise and Premiss of Procurement

2011-12-06T14:56:00.006Z

In my parent's pub hung prints of Hogarth's great series, The Rake's Progress and The Harlot's Progress.

Their scenes of depravity, designed as awful warnings excited me no end, though I didn't know then that some of the figures shown were based on real life.

On the left we see the infamous Procuress Mother Needham about to recruit the innocent country girl Moll Hackabout for the benefit of the gent fondling himself in the background.

Moll has just got off the coach from the country and knows no better - a scene brought to mind when a couple of weeks ago I received a request from some procurement people to fill in some forms so as to be listed as a supplier to a client I have been working for some seven years.

Now you and I, dear reader, forced as we are to live in the real world might think the chief things we want to know about someone who does what I do are these.

1. Do I get generally good results? And more particularly do I get good results for this client?

2. Do I charge a decent price for what I do?

3. Do I deliver on time?

4. Do I deliver what was asked for?

5. Can I deliver quickly if necessary?

That sort of thing. They might at a pinch ask what services I supply, I suppose.

They never did, and I shall come to that in a moment. But as far as I know the answers to those five questions are yes, yes, yes, yes and yes - otherwise they wouldn't keep coming back.

I have never been beaten in tests. My prices, though not the cheapest, are far cheaper than those people with silly names, fancy offices, hot and cold running 23-year olds and phalanxes of indescribably verbose planners.

What's more, although my partner teases me that I write the stuff then read the brief afterwards, it always seems to be pretty much what the doctor ordered. Moreover, I have never missed a deadline And I have been known to deliver stuff in less than week from brief to completion.

In a sane world that is what buying services is all about. But not in the Weird World of Procurement. The questionnaires I was sent (there were two) were concerned with my hiring practices, compliance, ethics and so forth. They were written as though I was a supplier of meat pies or toilet paper.

People who do rely on procurement - like government departments, the armed forces and so on - are famous for three things. They take too long to get things. They often get the wrong things. And they overpay to an astounding degree.

Today's procurement looks into all the things that don't matter, ignores the ones that do, and is not only not helpful but devastatingly harmful.

If you fall for the great procurement rip-off, you may not end up like poor Moll Hackabout, who died in a lunatic asylum. You don't have to wait that long. You're crazy to start with.

Weasels in Auntie Val's marmalade? Digging for Defeat - and a Pre-Hangover Offer

2011-12-05T07:12:00.005Z

A weasel, as all good copywriters know, is a word or expression that gives you a misleading impression of something, usually good, without actually lying.

Common ones are "virtually" and "up to".

Anyhow. yesterday the one I love brought me a jar of Auntie Val's Orange and Blueberry marmalade. Being a sad old person I read the ingredients, which stressed that the contents are entirely natural. They include natural blueberry flavouring. This phrase had me confused. Is that blueberries or isn't it? If it isn't how is it natural? Was a weasel at work?

People selling get-rich quick stuff on the Internet don't bother with weasels - they just lie. All politicians should wear weasel suits every day. So should the U.S. Food and Drug Administration which has just classified pizza as a vegetable. They have done so because the people who supply the gunk that goes into pizza spend millions, maybe billions, on lobbying - or bribery as we used to call it.

When historians come to explain the reasons for the ultimate decline of the West I think eating will come high on the list, just after education.

In the second world war I remember lots of posters headed Dig for Victory, encouraging people to grow their own vegetables. It is impossible to grow pizza, but here in Britain we are busy digging for defeat - with our teeth. And we're doing pretty well. British women are now the fattest in Europe. Can we catch up with the U.S.?

One question is this: are McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Burger King and so on really our secret weapon? Even in China, home of the world's best cuisine, some have taken off. Will these clever young people out-eat us and become as good for nothing as we are? I greatly fear not, because they are as keen on education as we are not.

On the matter of education, here's a deal for you. I have not been pestering you about EADIM lately, mostly because I've already sold either 22 or 23 seats out of 40 (there is some dispute about this among the troops).

I must thank the gallant folks who've already started ponying up without knowing who will speak next year for their faith in me. As ever, everything is subject to change. However I can say that one speaker will be Howie Jacobson, co-author of Adwords for Dummies who seems to be very good at getting people to come up with great ideas to promote their businesses. I am also talking to Professor Srikumar Rao, author of Happiness at Work - and a stunningly inspiring speaker.

You are going to need all the ideas and inspiration you can get in the next 12 months, I promise you, so I have also persuaded an old associate, Ian Mulingani, to come and talk about some very interesting stuff.

These include how to survive (and eventually do even better than before) when almost your entire customer base vanishes in a matter of weeks. And how to turn your customers into your salesforce. It's a lot cheaper than advertising - and he has the numbers to prove it. Ian and his colleagues work with some of the world's biggest brands on some astonishingly complex things - everywhere from here to Mongolia. Really.

Anyhow, everyone is about to stop everything for Christmas, so here's the deal on EADIM. It's not as good as the last one, but you can save £600 off the full cost of £2,000 plus VAT - with 10 monthly payments.

You can see what last year's event was like at www.eadim.com. If you're interested or have any questions, email me, Drayton@draytonbird.com. The deal ends when the year ends. No exceptions.

Anyhow, on the matter of education dedicated readers may have noticed with relief that I have not been promoting my EADIM event for a few weeks. The reasons are simple: I have sold 24 out of 40 places, and thought it would only be polite to give a you a clue about who might be speaking.

Well, these things are, as they say, subject to change, but so far everyone who has been invited to speak in the last four years has been kind enough to turn up. I expect next October that our faculty will include Howie Jacobson, co-author of Adwords for Dummies, and also one ofmy own long-time associates, Ian Mulingani.

I shall say more about Howie later, but if you are interested in how to survive a catastrophic recession and come out grinning like a a hyena you can learn a lot from Ian, whose clients include several of the world's most famous brands. One of his many secrets is a way of turning your customers into your salesforce. It's a lot cheaper than advertising, believe me.

Fashionable drivel with helpful advice from 400 years ago - plus your advice, please

2011-12-01T08:15:00.014Z

I'll tell about the picture in a minute as it may interest you.

But first, I am often amused by the way, at regular intervals, people tell you everything has changed, customers are getting smarter etc., etc.

Only this morning I read that a business expert, referring to the internet, and the great social media yawn-a-thon thinks “In this new world, we are more and more dependent on word-of-mouth.”

Sorry. It's all balls.

I regularly quote research conducted for Buick about 7 years ago which asked people what governed their choice of a new car. The chief reason given was word of mouth. (TV advertising, on which Buick were pissing away most of their money was given as least important, and boring old direct mail from dealers came second after word of mouth).

I will happily wager that word of mouth always has been and always will be the chief single reason why people buy things - or do things, for that matter. The internet just allows more people to sound off than ever before, and since most of what they say is rubbish, I'm not sure how much it helps.

I would imagine people are, if possible, getting more stupid, too.

Back in the '60's fashionable educational theory proposed that nobody should be allowed to fail. The real result has been that educational standards have been lowered to such a degree that in reality almost everyone does. This is not helped by the fact that governments fiddle things to make them look better than they are.

A big thing worth remembering about people was well put about 400 years by Sir Francis Bacon in one of his essays: "Men behave as they are accustomed". Our own marketing hero John Caples said "Times change. People don't"

***

Here are three things I would appreciate your advice about.

1. Craig Sunney, one of my EADIM graduates, lives in Umbria, Italy in a village called Rotecastello, which means red castle. It's the one in the picture and I suspect he inhabits it. Maybe I should be his student.

Last week we had drinks in Leicester Square and he told me a lovely story.

Rotecastello has an annual Festa (like a Spanish Fiesta) which includes a classical concert. The concert has always lost money, dragging everything down financially.

He told me how he had used different thinking and all manner of media from roadside banners to direct mail to badges to on-line advertising to promote the event. I have seen the material (very elegant) and he made it profitable.

I was fascinated and amused particularly by the fact that none of the organising committee will speak to him now. Ah, politics!

Would you like to know how he did it? I have never seen anything local promoted so well.

2. I have clients in South East Asia who help people sell property - not just in that area but in the U.K. and Europe. Last year I spent some time working with them on a ten part series for their clients about how to do good marketing.

Would you be interested if I turned it into a little e-book?

3. Four years ago I set about what I now think was an unduly elaborate thing called Commonsense Marketing which has been running ever since.

It consisted (and still does) of a course that teaches marketing from A to Z, plus interviews with people I admire, and general advice. It went on forever and ever and had three levels, but I plan to relaunch an improved and simplified version in January. Would you like to try it free for a month? Existing subscribers will get a special deal.

As usual, send me emails saying Festa, or Basics or Commonsense (whichever interests you). Thanks for your help.

P. S. I must warn you that I do get carried away. If enough people are interested in the Italian Festa story, I might go mad and try and arrange a jaunt there. Many people consider Umbria the most beautiful part of Italy - and my rule in life is "why not?"

How NOT to write copy. This writer swallowed the wrong dictionary - then vomited all over the page.

2011-11-29T03:32:00.014Z

In my talks about copy I always suggest three pretty steadfast rules:

1, What you offer matters far more than what you say.

2. What you say matters far more than how you say it.

2. The headline matters far more than any other part of the copy.

What perhaps I fail to stress enough is that it helps if you can write English - and if you write badly enough you can unsell something

I was quite taken by the offer from Groupon this morning headed Overnight Break For Two in the Forest of Dean With Breakfast and Cream Tea for £63 at The Speech House Hotel (Up to 60% Off).

We don't live that far away from the hotel and the picture looked OK. What's more I'm as cheap as chips and a pig for cream tea.

But then, oh dear! the copy went into semi-literate orbit, in some weird copywriter's baroque - as follows:

While they make a lovely country getaway, some thickly wooded areas can be unexplainably prejudiced against numbers, earning them a reputation for being fourist. Stay indiscriminate with today’s Groupon: £63 for an overnight break in the Forest of Dean for two, including breakfast and a cream tea each at the Speech House Hotel.

I think "fourist" gets the Golden Turd Award, don't you? But there was more: a picture of the hotel, followed by:

Cuddled by a 27,000 acre forested duvet, The Speech House Hotel is a 17th century hunting lodge that oozes rustic charm fused with all the desirable facilities required to appease contemporary travellers. The auberge is well placed to offer an array of outdoorsy activities designed to leave guests well prepped for comfy beds and a view of Gloucestershire’s foliage. With food options including two restaurants and the casual orangery, the massive house treats wilderness wanderers to 21st century mini-breaking.

Will somebody please shoot that writer before he or she does any more damage?

Or, to quote W. S. Churchill: "Use simple words everyone knows, then everyone will understand."

Do you want to be cuddled by a forest? Do you yearn to be indiscriminate? Come to think of it, I wonder if whoever wrote that is a native English speaker. Hard to believe, isn't it? It reads as though written by someone from Transylvania.

What kind of customers do you have? New audio series, Virgin's banking plans, Spain and Northwestern - and an old video

2011-11-27T09:54:00.019Z

If you want to persuade people, you'd better understand them.

So here's a tip: read the correspondence.

Many years ago I wrote copy for a pain reliever called Cephos. The fact that people used put it in warm water to sooth their aching feet told you a lot about what they were like. We used strip cartoons in the advertising.

When I was working on American Express I was impressed by the fact that the top people - in the U.K., anyhow - used to listen in on customer calls.

***

Currently there is heated discussion on the Citywire site about a speech made by Nigel Farage, the UKIP man, about the European situation.

A man with the pseudonym "Dislexic Landlord" proves he's not kidding when he writes "the sooner we leave this curcus the better". But he is not alone. At least half the people writing in are ignorant and semi-literate. The other half are pretty well-informed and write well.

Schizophenia rules, I guess

***

I promised a week or so ago to start a series of audio seminars on creative and marketing.

It's amazing how long it took me to get round to doing it, as so many people like to listen to stuff in the car. Anyhow, having decided to give it a go I thought I might do it properly for a change and ordered a decent microphone.

This arrived on Thursday - but I was immediately thrown into a panic because my partner Al was rushed into hospital with a punctured appendix. He's O.K. now, thank God.

However, abnormal service will start this week.

I was not sure if I should have two separate series or just one. The reason is that I don't really think you can be much good at the communications if you don't understand the business. On balance I think one makes sense.

I will try and base it on my two books - Commonsense and How to Write. I suspect more people buy than read them.

***

I read somewhere that Richard Branson promises to shake up the banking industry the way he shook up the railways.

This is more of a threat than a promise.

For years Virgin Trains were a complete bugger's muddle. I remember having to spend a night in some dire hotel in the middle of nowhere because my Virgin train from Manchester to London broke down - and their fare structure is as impenetrable and outrageous as everyone else's.

What's more, as a friend pointed out the other day, the Virgin financial services, after a fine start, are now not much better than anyone else's - nor are their marketing messages. I believe that internally they have the same initiative-crushing deadheads running things as their competitors.

***

On the matter of the great Spanish copy day, we are looking at the end of March in either Alicante or Malaga. And someone in the U.S. suggested a second day for the determined.

Re: Northwestern University, that looks like taking place in January. I'll keep you posted about these two events.

***

Last, for a bit of light relief I just found this interview I did 30-odd years ago with Leo Toralballa, then a top banana at American Express in New York - and a very funny man.

I asked him for the secrets of success, and his reply was utterly unplanned and unexpected.

If you can't see the video above, try clicking here.

Another up his own arse show-biz loon gets carried away - this time in Sydney. And some thoughts about the BBC's betrayal of trust

2011-11-24T05:44:00.005Z

Over here we have a man called Moyle (or Moyles - can't remember which) who gets paid far too much for blathering away in the morning on BBC radio.

His chief characteristics appear to be homophobia, anti-semitism, an ability to sink lower than even the lowest dregs among his audience and being employed by the BBC, whose desire to appeal to the moronic millions knows no bounds. Since none of the BBC bosses does what they are supposed to he has never been fired.

I often wonder if the people who run things at Broadcasting House ever stop to consider the difference between quantity and quality, and that getting an audience of millions of half-wits is not what good broadcasting is about and doesn't reflect their charter in the least.

You can plough through that charter if you like, though I don't recommend it as it is 48 pages of turgid stuff with many misprints clearly designed to discourage scrutiny, but the only bit that matters says the BBC should be:

(a) sustaining citizenship and civil society;

(b) promoting education and learning;

(c) stimulating creativity and cultural excellence;

(d) representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities.

I didn't make that up. That really is what they are required to do by Royal Proclamation, and they only do maybe half those things. More to the point it says a lot about the people who run this country that none of them, not one, seems to have asked anyone, anyone at all, at the BBC why they don't do their jobs. If I had a copywriter who didn't write or only wrote half time I would fire him or her. Why should they be different?

In fact every one of the top BBC apparatchiks deserves to be picked up and thrown violently on to the pavement at Great Portland Street without a pension for:

a) not even attempting to do the job they are required to do, with such clear instructions;

b) wasting too much of our money on people who have nothing to with broadcasting and paying them more than the Prime Minister.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world an oaf called Kyle Sandiland on 2DayFM in Sydney has sounded off on air at some poor woman who didn't like his show with this barrage of fourth form wit:

“Some fat slag has already branded us a disaster … What a fat bitter thing you are, you deputy editor of an online thing. You’ve got a nothing job anyway. You’re a piece of shit … You are supposed to be impartial, you little troll … Yeah, and your blouse, you haven’t got that much titty to be wearing that low cut a blouse. Watch your mouth, girl, or I will hunt you down.”

Rare command of language amidst the megalomania - but it's got him in trouble with his sponsors who are all deserting him. The reason that made me laugh most was from Holden, who were Australia's biggest car manufacturer until Toyota came along and cheated by making cars that cost less and were more reliable.

They said they think the show is "no longer in line with Holden's core values." Ah! Dear old core values, second cousin to key issues and beloved of Chief Marketing Officers everywhere.

Incidentally, the show the lady criticised, which was on TV, started out with 1.4 million viewers - because it followed an episode of the X Factor - of whom 1.2 million had switched off by the time it ended. God, it must have been bad.

More to the point, he just may have betrayed 2DayFM's core values, which are to make as much money as possible in any way not actually criminal and never upset the advertisers.

I should say, by the way, that I find Australian talk radio utterly fascinating and have done ever since I first visited in 1971. It's amazingly outspoken and often extremely funny. Compared to the pallid stuff we get here for the most part it is far, far better.

That applies to Australian language generally, which reflects the national character and is tons more vigorous than what we trot out over here. But that's another subject.

If they can't write English, how good d'you suppose they are on investment advice? Plus a bizarre sense of priorities that mystifies me

2011-11-23T14:09:00.009Z

Eileen McCarthy of UK Auctioneers in Chester got a message from the Financial Times who wanted her to advertise.

It read, "As a number of global dynamics play out, investors are still airing on the side of caution and sticking to less volatile, safe haven stocks.

With only four IMA sectors making a gain in September, achieving returns is becoming ever harder. But never fear, as there are areas where investors are almost guaranteed to make a return.

Antiques is one of them."

I fear the journo who bashed that out is erring on the side of illiteracy - and for all I know, truth as well. That little word "almost" is usually a bit of a give-away, isn't it?

What is interesting is how some people involved in finance can get away with murder while others get clobbered left right and centre. Anyone encouraging people to save - generally a good thing - has their copy so slaughtered by the FSA that it's almost impossible to put forward a coherent argument.

On the other hand, those who encourage them to spend have for years got away with murder. Now, I see, the government is bent on stopping the credit card industry incentivising people to borrow. They are worried about people getting into trouble as a results of having to pay interest rates of 15 - 20%.

But what astounds me - and I keep banging on about this - is that they let Wonga, who charge as much as 4214%, to advertise everywhere from the internet to footballers' shirts. They have a specious argument that because you're only borrowing for a short time the interest rate is irrelevant. On the same lines I could argue that a quick, violent rape is not as bad as a slow, more gentle one.

When I say "criminal" I am not suggesting they are criminals. I suspect even the Mafia would be more reasonable. And when I say "astounds me" it astounds me that any set of people pretending to govern could be worried about 20% when that kind of stuff's going on. We know they're clueless about money, but come on. Can't they count?

Just a point of view, that's all.

A little self-promotion - and what the Bliar and McToad started, Cameron and Osborne look set to finish

2011-11-22T20:29:00.003Z

I'll get to the bit all about Me, glorious Me in a minute, but the chief reason why I have to bray so loudly is because of what successive governments have done to me and lot of old codgers like me.

First, one of the most diligent architects of our present woes, G. Brown, in need of money to hire more public servants almost halved the value of the pension fund I'd been building for twenty odd years. Obviously necessary if I'm to subsidise the pensions of the people he hired.

More recently the Bank of England's been printing money to make sure that whatever I do get will be worth less when I get round to spending it.

And now there are rumours that the hopeless crew who currently mismanage our affairs are considering slashing the tax relief people get when they save for a pension and the tax free benefits when they cash in. The result will be to push the current abysmal savings rate even lower. If that isn't a dumb, retrograde idea I don't know what is.

Brilliant stuff, in fact. Only necessary because you have not, as promised, done anything to cut spending on jobs for the boys who sit on committees or indeed anything else. It would have taken a fair old leap of imagination to believe that anyone could be less competent than the last bunch of dead beats, but you've pulled it off. You're outspending them, so you need to out-steal them.

All this is the chief reason why I really must draw your attention, dear reader, to http://draytonbird.net/copydvd/. It's an opportunity to improve yourself in one of the few areas that can make you a lot more money without costing you a lot more money, which is copywriting.

There are some ghastly pictures of me in it, looking slightly pregnant (impossible, I know: you're either pregnant or you're not). But there is also a good video at the end which I put there because it's worth watching whether you want to buy anything from me or not.

Thanks for reading these maunderings. And thanks to all of you who send me comments. It makes it all worthwhile.

Is a slum really the answer? And how to become a famous author, speaker etc., in two shakes of a lamb's tail

2011-11-18T17:08:00.012Z

I took the picture outside Bristol Cathedral, which I walk past pretty much every every day.

They show the camp set up by the people who are protesting against the excesses of capitalism – something I too feel pretty strongly about. They have stated that they want to create a slum there, and are doing a pretty good job.

When young, I used to protest against things like the atom bomb – I was lucky not to get arrested.

We used to march and hand in petitions to parliament. We couldn’t go and camp out because most of us worked for a living, but sadly the jobs many of these people would have if they could be bothered were stolen by Poles and other foreigners who are willing to work hard.

I am not sure a slum is the answer, but it can be very uncomfortable. At 10. 50 last night on my way back from work I saw one industrious slum-builder riding a bike up Whiteladies Road, no doubt going home. He was wearing a jaunty top-hat with a feather in it, looking like a character from Barnaby Rudge.

The tactics of these people remind me of a story about the great Labour Leader Ernest Bevin. In the 1940’s, as now, many Labour politicians loathed each other, and on being told that Ernest Morrison was his own worst enemy, Bevin replied “Not while I'm alive 'e ain't.

***

Among the people currently giving me wry amusement is J. P. Maroney, the famous writer and public speaker you never heard of.

Since his name rhymes with baloney I have never been quite sure if he is an elaborate practical joke, but for a long time he was trying to turn me, no doubt in exchange for money, into a wildly successful public speaker.

As I’ve been practicing at that for 34 years now – though with not nearly the success he guarantees - I haven’t paid much attention. Now, however, he is pushing some scheme whereby, faster and more easily than I have ever dreamed possible, I can become a famous author.

Well, I’ve been trying and failing at that, too, since 1964, when my first published book, a novel called “Some Rats Run Faster", came out. Quite regularly people embarrass me by saying they have found copies on the internet

This magisterial work would, said one reviewer, make me “Britain’s next best-selling author”. He was wrong, largely because though well-written it had no plot to speak of. If people don't want to know what's going to happen next, they lose interest.

Anyhow, yesterday the wag Maroney put up some answers to the questions many of us would-be authors ask ourselves. A brief quotation is called for.

Q2: Are you going to teach me how to write a book?

I have a unique approach to author. You’ll want to learn it and use it. Put it this way, with my method, you can literally "author" a book in a couple of days if you wish.

Q3: Can you help me choose WHICH book to write?

Yes. I'll show you how to find out what your market wants so you can write the RIGHT book (and make the maximum mool-lah from it).

Well stone the crows! Have I been barking up the wrong tree, or what? The “moo-lah” has been pathetically inadequate. I’ve been taking weeks and weeks to write a book. Amateurs like Mark Twain used to take years. With Maroney's method you could bang out the Bible by Christmas. That's a real money-spinner.

What I needed all the time but never knew it was a secret weapon called semi-literacy. Also, I must stop trying to write, start authoring and splash a few redundant quotation marks around.

I don’t quite know why, but I get the feeling that Mr. Maroney can do to literature what Hitler and Stalin did to Poland.

***

Incidentally, on capitalism, Winston Churchill's definition of democracy comes to mind. "The worst possible system, except for all the others."

This morning’s haul: an illiterate “holistic” miracle worker, another bloody legend and another sure-fire formula. Will it ever end? And does it work?

2011-11-17T06:42:00.006Z

Someone clever once observed that if the tray tables on your aircraft aren’t clean you start to wonder how well they look after the engines.

In much the same way, I wonder about people promising miracles who can’t write decent English. This applies to a lot of the stuff I get which is written in what I call folksy-bollocks-language. But nothing beats the email I got this morning headed Women gives Money Luck....., You will Like This...!

I don’t actually want to get pregnant right now, but I am put off by an incoherent heading followed by PLEASE, NOT ANOTHER pregnancy GIMMICK!

This is especially true if it's immediately followed by, well, another pregnancy gimmick:

Now, I know many of you are saying, "Oh no, not another 'get pregnant in 7 days' program". To be totally honest, I thought the same thing. Rest assured, this is not the case. It is not a quick fix, or gimmick. Its 250+ pages of solid, clinically proven holistic information for getting pregnant. She starts from square one and teaches you everything you need to know. Doesn't matter what type of infertility you have and regardless of your age or lifestyle, you WILL learn something from this book.

The testimonial is priceless and reads: Dear Friends,

I found this information which of no use to me as a man, but I know by spreading this information
I can help other people's life. I believe in doing good deeds will bring back good karma to me,
abundance of wealth and happiness. We never knew with whose prayer we get success and abundance of wealth. Just keep doing good things in life, you will definately get abundance of wealth.
just Clik here, you will know what to do...,

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? How did the word holistic, beloved of phoneys everywhere, creep into this salvo of ignorance? But this may work for two reasons. 1. For every illiterate, demented and crooked promoter there is a horde of illiterate and desperate prospects, growing fast because of our broken-down educational system. 2. The words “money” and “luck” always attract readers.

This may also be true of the word “legend”. When I was 12 I read a book called Myths and Legends of Ancient Babylon and Assyria, written by the archaeologist J. M Breasted. Bloody boring, actually, but I was (and am) a history nut. Today there are more myths and legends than ever were in ancient Mesopotamia, especially in sales and marketing – and I see another has emerged in the shape of “Sales Training Legend Stan Billue”.

I have to declare an interest here, mind. People regularly call me legendary, to the point that occasionally I wake up and breathe on a mirror to see if I really exist. One person who does exist and is as legendary as they come is Jeff Walker who is busy promoting a re-packaged version of his Product Launch formula, with added bells and whistles on social marketing (surprise!) and the help of his many “good friends”.

A good friend, if you don’t know, isn't really a good friend. Did you know that? It is someone who hopes to make money by flogging your latest money-making scheme as an affiliate. A formula, if you don’t know, is something vastly overpriced that you fondly hope will spare you the pain of hard work and hard thinking. It won’t.

I'm not saying all these formulae are complete moonshine. They do work, for a precious few and up to a point. This one is really an elaboration of the system used by Hollywood for the last 80 years. You will learn far more from the way it is promoted than anything else.

What none of these people – not even the most celebrated – has ever done is work on proper businesses - big brands in the big wide world. Some are just dishonest. The best-known in this country was caught lying by the Advertising Standards Authority.

I wonder why nobody notices this. There really are a lot of mugs out there. That doesn't mean you have to join them.

How the Greeks will solve their debt problem. An old, but good parable

2011-11-16T10:27:00.005Z

It is a slow day in the little Greek Village.

The rain is beating down and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.

A rich German tourist, name of Merkel, is driving through the village, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner she wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.

The owner gives her some keys and, as soon as she has walked upstairs, grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel.

The guy at the Farmers' Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill at the taverna. The publican slips the money along to the local prostitute drinking at the bar, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer him "services" on credit.

The hooker then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note.

The hotel proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich traveller will not suspect anything. At that moment the traveller comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town.

No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole village is now out of debt and looking to the future with renewed optimism. And that, gentle readers, is how the bailout package works.

TBQ at the BBC, a cheeky little agency scam and other assorted hoots

2011-11-15T04:00:00.002Z

Did I ever tell you about the time I was asked to join a BBC committee all about the future?

It was all about predicting what was going to happen in the 21st century. Total wankfest, as you'd imagine. One meeting was enough. What a shame they're increasing the TBQ (Total Bollocks Content) and cutting back on the things that make them good - like the World Service.

A perfect example of what's gone wrong in Broadcasting House is on their weather website, brought to my attention with a groan of despair by Crispin White. "We're building a new weather experience for you". WTF???? Are they going to arrange a heatwave on New Year's Day? No: just a new way to show the bloody weather forecast. Are they hiring failed ad copywriters to churn out this tawdry stuff?

The rot set in, of course, when Thatcher got rid of the last real programme maker to be Director-General and replaced him with a bloody accountant, followed by a man called Birt who spoke nothing but corporate jargon. Tony the Bliar, saviour of the Middle East - favourite Charity, Tony Blair's bank account - loved him. They probably used to sit there talking to each other about stakeholders and Tony's Third Way (which is up your arse, if you really want to know),

Anyhow, bit by bit the BBC made fewer and fewer of their own programmes, and bought more in from outside. Then they hired more and more people to buy the programmes. Net result, millions of our money pissed away and a man at the top called Mark Thompson getting paid nigh on a million quid to do a shit job.

Someone should remember the BBC motto: Nation shall speak peace unto nation. Cameron, or Bliar-Lite as we all realise, should stop giving aid money to kleptocrats in poor countries and give half to the World Service and the rest back to us.

It'd be a good idea, too, to fire all the corporate drones starting with the top man. Then they could use that money saved to hire people who will make BBC programmes rather than paying outsiders to do the job. Just like they used to.

***

On the matter of failed copywriters an agency called The Lean Agency (geddit?) has had a brilliant wheeze. Instead of just hiring freelance writers and so on they're offering "franchises" - the poor dupes are expected to pay a fee for the privilege of working for them. Anyone who falls for that one deserves what they get.

The agency's website tells you all you need to know about why they need good copy. Thanks to Iain Maclean for sending me this egregious example.

***

Thanks to the folks who sent me messages reading "Berlusconi". You have been added to the great list of masochists who get my helpful ideas, and my colleague Bill Fryer will contact you about the sundry ways we can help you do better.

***

Lastly news for those of you interested in copy.

1. I promised a free webinar on copy today. I did two versions yesterday and didn't like either. So I have redone this morning, and if the radiant Chloe has time to edit it will be up later. I do sound a bit hoarse, but it may interest you.

It is just under 30 minutes long, and covers something I will not be talking about in Spain.

2. On the matter of Spain, I am talking about arrangements with my client there, who is wisely busy this week doing his real job rather than doing favours to me. I will keep you posted.

3. The video of my Bristol Copy Seminar is now available and I will be writing about it later this week. The content will not be the same in Spain. I am working on something new to celebrate the spring.

My dancing years with Jimmy Saville and the career I lost – plus a little vulgar commerce

2011-11-12T13:23:00.006Z

The picture is for overseas readers who don’t know who the hell Jimmy Saville – or rather Sir Jimmy Saville OBE, who died a couple of days ago - was.

He was as you see the epitome of understated good taste and I once had a job interview with him. How my life would have changed if I had ignored his advice!

I first laid eyes and ears on him when I was 19 and used to go dancing every weekday lunch time and on Tuesday evenings at a ballroom in Manchester called The Plaza.

I was a pretty nifty terpsichorean by all accounts. Seven years ago someone I had not seen since those days sent me an email mentioning that people used to copy my moves. I can’t express how much childish delight that gave me – but that’s enough about that.

Jimmy Saville was the new manager at the Plaza, and when the band wasn’t on he used to play records with a commentary. The first time I heard him I turned to a friend and said, “That man is going to make a fortune.”

“Why?” my friend asked.

“Because he can talk non-stop about fuck-all and keep your attention.”

Yes, friends: Jimmy Saville was the first real disc jockey I ever heard. Others played records with comments about the people who made them, the music and so on. Jimmy used a twin-turntable (and had done since 1947) with minimal gaps between records. During the gaps he talked non-stop about nothing in the most engaging way with a bizarre semi-transatlantic phraseology delivered in a broad Yorkshire accent.

He became by far the most successful DJ in Britain - and certainly the only one to be knighted. He wore ghastly track-suits and gold chains, dyed his hair blonde, had a litany of catch-phrases, several of which entered the language, never married and did a prodigious amount of work for charity. The picture is of him with a local charity - when he was 80 years old.

All those years ago I was so struck by him that, having a love of music, a trivial mind and a burning desire to show off I got an interview with him. He was a very nice man. When I said I was married he advised me not to become a DJ as it would ruin my marriage. Ironic, really, as I managed that all on my very own.

One of my most interesting career opportunities in those years was being asked by a very attractive blonde dancing partner if I’d like to be her ponce. I declined, not on moral grounds but because I am a coward and thought the job might involve violence.

So there you are.

Meanwhile, if you are worried about whether the world is coming to an end I have five practical money-making ideas for you, most but not all to do with e-commerce.

I am emailing them to my list. If you are not on that list, just email Drayton@Draytonbird.com reading “Berlusconi”. That will help you remember one big fat crooked degenerate reason you’re going to need better ideas and also remind me to send you the ideas.

They do not include setting up as a disc jockey. However my friend Martin Chilcott is not only a is freely available for parties and excellent marketing advice. As I may have mentioned oh, three hundred times, four of my family are musicians and I know a lot more than Martin about soul, jazz and r'n'b no matter what he thinks, the poor young fool.

Very droll: another blinding glimpse of the obvious lurches out of the intellectual undergrowth - plus Ocado's marketing madness

2011-11-11T15:47:00.003Z

Friends accuse me of mock-modesty when I say that any success I have had has little to do with my abilities but is almost entirely due to the sloth of many if not most people in the marketing game.

But I am absolutely serious and bring in evidence three instructive examples.

First, the advertisement shown here, which is about 90 years old. It is the work of Claude Hopkins, and a simple demonstration of what marketing is all about - besides illustrating one or two tricks that repay study.

Second, a relatively new online publication called Social Media Examiner which caters to fools in thrall to the latest silver bullet.

And third, why a company called Ocado that does almost everything right is not just shooting itself in the foot but enthusiastically cutting its legs off every day.

The Pepsodent ad shows how to acquire customers in any business. Offer a benefit, paint a word picture and give something away free that will capture customers. This is what you have to do on the internet, for example, though surprisingly few seem to know it.

The ad also forces retail distribution in a way most large firms today have never heard of. It sends retailers lots of people interested in Pepsodent.

The story of how Pepsodent became the leading toothpaste all those years ago despite being no better than any of its competitors is told in The Man Who Sold America. Please don't ask me about that because you should know of it and its subject already. Just read it.

Social Media Examiner is the brainchild of Michael Stelzner and good for him. His aim, I guess, is to enlighten people who a) think social media are the answer to maiden’s prayer and b) don't realise there is nothing new about how to succeed in these media. They are probably also under the illusion that a slogan is advertising and re-branding will save their witless little arses.

The latest Social Media Examiner offers a report called 4 Steps to Selling With Social Media. This tells you what Claude Hopkins knew 90 years ago. 1. Find a prospect. 2. Keep talking to them till they buy. 3. Keep them as long as you can. 4. Measure everything to see how you're doing.

Marketers who don't understand this should go and get a job growing turnips. If they did we would have lots more turnips, marketing departments would shrink by about two thirds and average return on marketing investment would double.

***

I have been studying Ocado, a very good home delivery service, for years. They don't understand one of the most important things in the process above, with disastrous consequences. I have manfully refrained from comment because I think they should pay me for this, but I can't keep quiet any longer.

Ocado are very good at finding prospects and making them buy. They do this by offering discounts. New customers go onto the database and they communicate with them regularly.

So far so good. But you know what happens next? They keep offering them discounts. Why? If the service is good (which it is) they don’t need to. They are training their customers not to buy except with a discount.

As my friend the late Professor Andrew Ehrenberg in the PIMS study run with the Ogilvy Centre for Research pointed out well over 25 years ago, this kills profits.

Whoever is responsible for this folly should have their brains surgically replaced with something more useful. Fish oil, maybe.

This man was breathing money when I was on a mere $480,000. Here's why

2011-11-10T16:31:00.005Z

My friend James Hammond, the Brand Doctor, sent me this (he studies everything and often mortifies me by producing stuff I never heard of).

It is written by Neil French. I don't know how you make it big enough to read. Get a magnfiying glass, maybe. It's worth it.

Neil was in charge of creative at Ogilvy Advertising around the time I was in charge of the direct side.

Naturally, advertising being more creative, he got paid tons more than me.

I suspect he deserved it. He produced the kind of ads that Raymond Rubicam said we should all aspire to – “that not only sells but is an excellent piece of work in its own right.”

Thank you James. And thank you Neil. We never met but I was always impressed by tales (apocryphal, I am sure) suggesting that my private life was downright tame compared to yours.

Some thoughts about banks - and how come people fall for all this second rate guff?

2011-11-09T09:19:00.008Z

Over the years I have seen both sides of most of the big banks in this country. I’ve done work and had business or personal accounts with them and they are bloody useless in both areas.

Lloyds Bank is deep in the doo-doo again, and that Spanish chap who did so well at Santander has taken to his bed.

I’m not in the least surprised. Not just because anyone who thinks the famous financial genius Lewis Hamilton is the right face for a bank must be a bit simple, but because I’ve suffered as a Lloyds customer since 1977.

I only retain an account with them because I get a decent overdraft and can’t be bothered to move to FirstDirect who are, I am told competent. But I still can’t understand why Lloyds computer regularly refuses to give me cash when I go to New York – five or six times every year.

I have suffered from Lloyds as a supplier, too. I introduced them to direct marketing in the early ‘80s, and God, it was hard work. I wrote a ten point proposal in the cab going over - which now forms part of one of the early chapters in Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing.

I didn't mean it to be done in such a hurry - I thought my colleague had done one and vice-versa.

Lloyds' main problem was an utter inability to actually do anything. This was largely because they carefully created a bottleneck in their system. Everything we did had to be approved by one nitwit, ignorant of all marketing and, like most big company marketers, disinclined to learn. So progress was snail-like.

Years later I did a proposal for them for the launch of an internet bank. That project (nothing came of it) was being managed entirely by outside consultants, which brings a whole new plangent meaning to the phrase abdication of responsibility.

When I worked with the Bank of Scotland one executive said at a conference of financial marketers that everything we ever did for them beat what it was tested against – but they still kept the account with one big useless agency. It is astonishing that return on investment doesn’t matter to a bank.

The only bank client who seemed any good was with the Banco Comercial Portuges, but he stiffed me for £5,000 eventually.

My solution for the banks is simple.

1. Move your headquarters to somewhere much cheaper.

2. Fire half the people there at random and give some of the savings to the poor bastards who work in the branches.

3. Ban all meetings that a) last longer than 30 minutes b) where all present cannot give a good reason why and c) do not produce a decision to act with a time by which that action is to be taken, and a person deputed to make sure it is.

4. Cease all marketing that cannot be proven to either a) get more customers or b) get customers to stay longer or c) get them to spend more - or is measured by means of qualitative research alone.

The banks are not the only people without a clue, though. A year ago I wrote about an insurance mailing that I swear will work, and am prepared to do a profit-sharing deal with any firm that will run it.

A few people replied including one from AXA who said he was there to “shake things up” and one from another firm who claimed to be keen. Nothing happened.

One reason nothing happens in business is because of the amount of useless bullshit, useless bullshitters and useless people who fall for it.

The other day a firm offered a report called Strategically Social: 5 Keys to Becoming a Social Business, so I replied out of curiosity.

The report was full of statistics and words like empowering and leveraging, but told me absolutely nothing anyone even half-well-informed shouldn't know, No wonder: the writer was a CRM expert: i.e. a specialist in busted flushes.

A salesman called Randy followed up three times – quite right: they want to take money off me.

He was “touching base … to get some general feedback. How is Drayton Bird Associates currently active in the social media space?”

So, clearly no research had been done, other than into all-purpose corporate cliché.

In the third follow-up he wanted to discuss “how Drayton Bird Associates is currently using, or plans to use, social media to achieve your overall corporate objectives."

I replied “The day I start having "overall corporate objectives" is the day I quit, Randy.

What I do is make money, and to help in that I post on blog, twitter and facebook plus send out emails totalling between them about 50 times a week.

It works just fine.”

Politics and marketing: why I won’t shut up no matter how much it bores you

2011-11-06T13:44:00.004Z

Two weeks ago one of the speakers at EADIM took me aside and made some helpful suggestions. One was that I should stop writing about politics – “I find it infuriating” he said.

He said I should stick to marketing, because that’s what I’m known for and what people want to hear about from me.

I respect his views so I listened, said nothing and thought about it.

He may be right but I don’t think so.

I believe a narrow focus on marketing stunts your thinking. We live in wider world; everything we do is affected by what politicians do. If you doubt it, consider the current chaos and ask who is responsible.

If you’re in Europe ask yourself, for example, how much European legislation - drafted by people you never voted for - affects your ability to use direct mail or to hire and fire. Or how much you personally will be paying to sort out Greece and other countries. Then work out how much your marketing results must improve to for you to afford the money.

Moreover how politicians market themselves - or fail to - teaches many lessons.

In the 1950’s the Eisenhower campaign was the first (as far as I know) to use tested direct marketing methods. They actually tested several messages to see which got the greatest response (most big firms, 60 years later have still not got round to this).

I worked on the Thatcher, Major and Blair campaigns. None of the people running them had a clue from a direct marketer’s perspective.

When I was working for the Tories I had chat with a friend who was working for the Socialists. He told me,"All they're interested in is 'what are you going to say about me." This is exactly the thinking that leads to the self-congratulatory bilge large marketers indulge in.

Obama ran the most sophisticated campaign ever, but is a telling instance of the fact that you should never over-promise.

As Bill Bernbach put it, “Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising.” I am not suggesting Obama is a bad product. I am suggesting his is a case of “No, you can’t”. Obama could never in a million years change everything. He is in a far, far worse situation than if he had made more modest claims.

But let me turn closer to home where some extraordinary marketing is likely to defeat the biggest clown to run Italy since Mussolini - and in some ways a worse man. Mussolini almost destroyed the mafia. Berlusconi was financed by them.

Italy is in a far, far worse state than it was before they started complying with European employment legislation which puts you off hiring people – even temporarily - because you can’t fire them. From having the fastest growing economy in Europe they have regressed to becoming a basket case – and it all started from the moment they started following the rules.

Many Italians thought that even if was a crook, Berlusconi was able. They were disappointed - which brings me to what is happening in Italy right now.

Michele Santoro, a broadcaster whom Berlusconi tried to destroy, looks like destroying him. How? Partly because he is the most popular broadcaster in Italy – but also by extremely clever marketing.

Berlusconi controls either directly or indirectly all the major broadcasting channels. He fired Santoro – twice. Santoro sued and was reinstated. Then, what a surprise, Santoro’s programme – the most popular in Italy with 8 million viewers- was cancelled.

So Santoro went out and made deals with all the small local independent channels so that people could see a programme untrammelled by state interference. In 48 hours he raised 230,000 Euros from private individuals in payments of 10 euros. Enough for the first programme to be filmed at Cinecitta, the famous film studios in Rome..

2 million people watched that programme. Nobody knows how many more watched on line but 200,000 people posted messages on facebook during the programme.

Santoro is a very witty man – and shows great stuff.

One example is a sequence showing a meeting of Berlusconi supporters. They would feel at home in the BNP. Another is a series of shots of Italian legislators in parliament all listening to their mobile phones. They are being told how to vote.

But one shouldn’t be patronising. Our own politicians are just so much lobby fodder.

Maybe this sort of thing doesn’t interest you and you don’t think it is worth learning from. I disagree. As John Donne wrote, "No man is an island". Nor is our trade.

Does this piss you off as much as it does me? Plus a great joke

2011-11-04T07:43:00.010Z

I'll explain what the picture's about in a minute. First though, a moan and a warning.

Dodgy sales people for years used a technique called bait and switch.

They would offer you something free or very cheap to lure you in, then sell you something expensive.

The best known example when I was first a creative director back in the '60's was John Bloom who used this technique to sell washing machines, fridges, dishwashers and even holidays in Bulgaria. (I rather suspect a holiday in communist Bulgaria was no holiday - I visited Varna for a day in 1980. Great wine and that was about it.)

Eventually Bloom went broke and moved to Los Angeles, opening a very successful medieval theme restaurant called 1520 AD. I think he runs a piano bar in Mallorca now.

People on the internet use this bait and switch technique it every day, especially the phoney “gurus”. But the people who really annoy me are such as Norton and File Cure who offer you free help, then say there are hosts of nasty bugs in your machine, nearly all if not all of which are quite harmless, before selling you their programmes.

As an aside, Dr. Harlan Kilstein wrote this the other day about the people who promise to make you rich "automatically":

"Have you ever noticed that the gurus are out with a new program so often.

I was once in a guru meeting where someone explained it:

We launch a product.

We make a few hundred thousand.

We party for a few months and blow all the money.

We start all over again".

Don't say you haven't been warned.

***

Anyhow, here's the joke that goes with the picture.

The wife and I were sitting around the breakfast table one lazy Sunday morning.

I said to her, "If I were to die suddenly, I want you to immediately sell all my stuff."

"Now why would you want me to do something like that?" she asked.

"I figure that you would eventually remarry and I don't want some other wanker using my stuff."

She looked at me and said: "What makes you think I'd marry another wanker?"

P. S. If you signed up for EADIM by sending Bingo to me and you weren't just tire-kicking you need to pay the first installment by the end of tomorrow, or if you have a problem or question, please write to Chloe@draytonbird.com now.

One simple thing you can do now that will transform your business – I guarantee it

2011-11-02T08:34:00.013Z

I'll tell you what the simple thing is in a minute, but first some relevant thoughts.

25 years ago David Ogilvy sent me the notes for a speech he was to make at a direct marketers' convention, asking for my comments.

I had none, but the speech has stuck in my mind ever since. (And I learned a lesson: no matter how good you think you are, always get people to comment on your stuff).

In the speech he pointed out that we lived in two different worlds. One was the world of the general advertisers, who had no idea what results they were getting. The other was our world. “You know. You know your results to a penny,” he said.

He urged direct marketers to go out and educate the general advertisers. “Why don’t you save them from their folly?” he thundered.

This was somewhat optimistic, as general advertisers saw us as oily rags beneath their notice who sent out shit on paper.

Nothing much has changed – even today most corporate websites are rubbish because few of the people who commission or sign them off realise that everything on the internet is direct marketing.

But before making an incredibly naive suggestion that might help I would like to say that in a larger sense we live in two parallel worlds today. That of politicians and big corporations and ours, where we have to sell – or else.

The mindless ignorance of politicians was highlighted by Bill Bonner in the Daily Reckoning the other day.

The Euro-buffoons sent a man to Beijing to see if the Chinese would help with their financial shortfalls. No dice. They said “China can neither take up the role as a saviour to the Europeans, nor provide a ‘cure’ for the European malaise. Obviously, it is up to European countries themselves to tackle their financial problems.”

Then the man went to see the Japanese. This caused Mr. Bonner great mirth. “Asking Japan for a loan is like asking a starving man for a piece of chocolate cake. Japan already has more government debt than anyone. Its public debt- to-GDP ratio is up to 230%,” said he.

The truth is that after they have finished smiling for the cameras while doing nothing very much Messrs. Sarkozy, Merkel, Cameron and so on will retire gratefully to the great trough filled to overflowing for them by their pals and supplemented by their gold-plated pensions. The same applies to the union leaders, bankers and so on. They don't share our worries.

At the start of my career I lived in a little two up and two down house in Ashton-under-Lyne. I was better off than my neighbours for two reasons. First, although our toilet was outside like theirs we were the only house in the row with a bath. Second, my parents gave me a good education.

Even then I was infinitely better off than the billions of people in the world today who have neither bathrooms nor toilets nor luxuries of any kind and are fighting to get into our pampered domains.

The salaries of the fat cats who run big corporations have soared as their workers’ have dropped in real terms. This is because they are determined by other fat cats who sit on their compensation, or rip-off committees. They are no more interested in results than when David made his speech. They still think advertising is all about fatuous slogans and wind-baggery - and their advertising agents know no better.

When I flew in on Tuesday Heathrow airport had posters for DHL all over the place. They read, “Where there’s room for improvement we’ll find it.” Then they modestly stated "EXCELLENCE. SIMPLY DELIVERED. AXA/PPP Healthcare say “PERFECTION/REDEFINED”. Please note the creative use of the . and the /. To you they may be a mere slash or a full stop. But this is award-winning stuff, friends, agonised over in many a long, cash-burning meeting.

You may never have to move to a house with an outside toilet, but unless you too have cash to burn you’d better get a lot better at what you do than these people. To give you an idea, here is the ending to some copy that ran when times were much harder than now.

Let nothing, absolutely nothing interfere with immediate action. A change for the better justifies no delay. Don't watch others make money which you could make. Be up and doing now. Tomorrow may be too late. Place your order and application this very minute. Take the action now that means more money next week, independence next year.

If all you ever do is look at everything you run in the next year and ask if it has that burning desire to get people to act your results will soar. I guarantee it.

You may be relieved to see that I have not suggested that if you want to do better you come to www.EADIM.com next October. I will leave you to draw that conclusion without me banging you over the head.

Thoughts on India, the decline of the west and all that happy stuff

2011-10-30T16:14:00.008Z

There's a very interesting piece in today's New York Times about the sudden interest in politics among the Indian middle class.

They've finally got fed up with the astounding level of corruption in Indian politics - the problem being that the people who elect the politicians are the poor, who far outnumber the middle class.

When I first went to India in 1987 I commented to a friend that they had some of the cleverest business people on earth struggling against a government determined to make doing business as near as dammit impossible through a poisonous combination of bureaucracy and corruption.

That was because those running things were a) socialists and b) thieves. The socialism may have gone to a large degree, but the theft remains, allied to a worrying and growing amount of religious bigotry.

Can a country be truly successful when it is so greatly corrupt? I look at places like China, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia - not to mention Italy - and doubt it.

Interesting Indian statistic: McKinsey reckons the Indian middle class will be 600 million by 2030 - the size of the entire population when I first went there.

***

Bill Bonner, writing in The Daily Reckoning suggests that it's no surprise people are protesting about inequality - and if he were in their place he would, too. He also draws a compelling comparison with the past:

When the US embraced its empire it condemned its middle classes. Why? Because that’s how empires work. They bring in cheap goods — and sometimes money itself — from outside. Whether they are taken as booty or traded for the imperial currency, the effect is about the same; they undermine local industries and local wages.

Ancient Rome imported wheat from Egypt, by the boatload, and gave it to citizens (an early form of food stamps). Result: the price of wheat collapsed. Small farmers couldn’t compete with free wheat. They couldn’t earn a living.

The Romans also brought in slaves. Rich, politically-connected Romans took over the small farms, consolidated them into big plantations, and ran them with slave labor. Again, the local labor was out of luck.

Things got so bad for the small farmers that they sold their children into slavery…and then, themselves. Then, in alarm, an edict prohibited Roman farmers from selling themselves into slavery. They were required to remain on their farms…and at work.

***

When I see British complaints about immigrants taking their jobs I too am reminded of ancient Rome.

In its decline Rome recruited barbarian mercenaries into the legions because they couldn't get enough of their own citizens to do the job.

One day a man called Alaric - a Goth from Romania - sacked Rome ... and not too many years later the Roman Emperor was a man called Odoacer. Nobody knows if he was a Hun or a German or even a Turk.

What gave him the power was that he controlled the army - the foederati - made up of barbarians recruited to defend the empire.

Please don't criticise my casual history. I'm just making a point.

Fishminster? Pissminster! How to lose a customer forever - even if you sell something superb. Plus the problem with big organisations - and a songbird

2011-10-27T07:40:00.010+01:00

Yesterday, my stomach rumbling happily, I strolled into an excellent (if expensive) fish and chip joint near me called Fishminster. (Why the odd name? They belong to Pieminster, a highly successful pie makers that started up in Bedminster in Bristol).

I was really looking forward to that crispy batter, those glorious chips. There was no other customer. Just the guy behind the counter chatting to a friend.

I stood there. He ignored me. I left.

He ruined my afternoon, the lazy prick. I will never go there again. That's not just one sale lost. It's years of sales. I would guess about £5,000.

***

Very perceptive observations in the Financial Times by Luke Johnson - the man who made Pizza Express and Strada so successful. The great divide between competence and uselessness is not between public and private sectors. It's between large and small.

He speaks of the "airless coffins" in which middle managers are confined. People to whom risk-taking is totally alien. They focus on "cost-cutting, out-sourcing and automation".

This instantly reminded me of my experiences this week in getting my passport delivered. I paid £20 extra for this to get it delivered. The Pisspot Office managed to find a delivery firm I never heard of called DX.

But it's even more bloody useless than the others (hard). I believe they've a new website that expresses their corporate vision called www.wedon'tgiveaflyingfuck.com.

I had to spend an extra £23 on a taxi to their depot because instead of delivering to my office as agreed they delivered it to Bristol - where the doorbell doesn't ring.

I think they have an About Us section on their website that reads "Proudly automated. If you can find out how to talk to a live human here you get a prize".

***

When you read this I'll be on my way to New York - moderately happy because I've already sold 18 out of 40 seats for EADIM next year, which will be at the start of October.

Yesterday when I went to get the train tickets to Heathrow, suddenly a familiar voice spoke next to me. It was my daughter Martina Topley-Bird, the celebrated chanteuse - now working mostly with Massive Attack.

She had this astounding Vivien Westwood thing on. Was it a coat? Was it a dress? Was it a plan? I don't know. but I guarantee there's nothing like it anywhere else in Bristol, where it turns out she's teaching music.

Hear her at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_pkWUNCv0k

Did you get my insane EADIM half price, easy terms offer? Here’s what one delegate wrote, verbatim

2011-10-25T10:30:00.008+01:00

O.K., enough wit and wisdom. This is naked commerce - about EADIM.

It ended three days ago, and I've started promoting next year already with a ludicrous deal.

Why so soon? If you don't know, then you don't know enough about marketing.

Why so ludicrous? Because early numbers help us plan - and then I can put the price back up, ho ho.

But if you’re wondering what kind of person finds EADIM worthwhile …

Or wondering what kind of person wants - and tends - to succeed as an entrepreneur …

And whether you should take my half-price offer while it’s still around …

Well, Denis Thornton who wrote what follows used to fly helicopters in the army.

(Many successful entrepreneurs are ex-forces).

This is what Denis wrote, 48 hours ago - verbatim …

When you’ve read it, if you want EADIM at half price with easy monthly terms, write to me Drayton@draytonbird.com with one word: Bingo. But do so before the end of the month. That's when the offer ends.

Thank you so much for a terrific event. I have pages and pages of actionable notes - as well as insights, new knowledge, and some funny stories. I am also inspired to re-double my efforts, having arrived at EADIM only 3 weeks after completely burning out thanks to multiple business activities alongside the day job. I honestly feel refreshed and optimistic and with a new plan.

Now, as you may know I am a fan of Dan Kennedy, and his monthly newsletter is excellent, but I went to his conference in Dallas in 2010, and it was a bit contrived because of the amount of pitching at the end of each session. I know that you could make a lot more money if you made EADIM like that, but it wouldn't be the same experience at all for us - it really was worth every penny to come. One insight that might intrigue you: everyone I spoke with agreed that we were having our best year of results ever - is that why we came to EADIM, or is it because we invest in ourselves with this training that we get the results? We got very drunk before any answers emerged, I'm afraid.

Please add me to the list for next year's event. Please let me know the dates asap so I can book my el-cheapo (but very nice) ex-soldier's hotel, the Union Jack Club

So there you are, gentle reader.

Denis is not the only one to want to repeat the EADIM experience. We have had one delegate - a pharmacist - come from Sydney twice in succession.

A pharmacist? Yes: a pharmacist. I really don't care what you sell or who you sell to or how much it costs or where you sell it - online or off - or whether it's to businesses or plain folk, we can show you:

How to get more customers.

How to get them for less.

How to get them to spend more.

How to keep them longer.

And if you’re wondering if you should act, please don’t imagine you’ll get a better offer. They get worse as the year wears on. (And I suspect we'll have sold half the seats by the end of the month, which is, as I said, when this offer ends.

Less than a week from now.

It is 10 monthly payments of £100 plus VAT - half price and easy terms.

That’s it.

You can see what Denis liked so much at www.eadim.com

And the word to send me, Drayton@draytonbird.com, if you want to climb on board while you can, is Bingo.

To hell with the Greek economy. Forget Angela and Nicolas. Screw the mess in the U.S. Balls to the people who print banknotes. Ignore the pensions rip-off.

Look after your economy. And it's not a bad idea to start by saving a fair amount now to help you make a whole lot more later.

Bingo!

How one firm thrives in a recession – in a medium some people think is dead or dying

2011-10-24T09:37:00.008+01:00

In 2002, Gartner the brilliant research experts said that by 2010 direct mail would "almost be a half-remembered relic".

Well, stone me! How strange that Mailbird, a relatively small firm that does nothing but send out direct mail fore clients, has just had a record year.

I asked Coral Russell, the bird who founded Mailbird, why this is.

Here's what she told me. Nothing secret - just a lot of the things every business should think about - but most don't.

Well worth reading if you want to survive in these troubled times.

We learn about our clients, their priorities and marketing needs. We treat them as individuals with their own ways of working.

This means they often don’t need to explain their preferences with every mailing which leads to repeat business.

It also helps us schedule work – vital for any mailing house – and frees us to react quickly and positively, because flexibility is essential. We can react in a way many businesses simply cannot.

Our clients know this and our customer retention, which is vital, is high.

We enjoy what we do, and are interested in the health of the industry as a whole. We believe in the medium of direct mail, and the product we offer.

Our employees have fun – Mailbird is a happy place to work.

We have a mix of clients from a variety of sectors, many less susceptible to the effects of economic downturn and recession.

We only take on clients whose needs we can genuinely fulfil. Pointless to be seduced by volume at a price or a time scale that dominates resource, and reduces the service we can offer all our clients.

We never take our eye off new business.

Excepting the key fixed asset – property – we own most of our assets.

Thus we are able to offer very good prices without having to take on work at rock-bottom prices to feed our machines.

BUT higher profits come from repeat business so relationship marketing is always at the forefront.

We offer a high level of service, are informed, reliable and very pleasant to deal with.

We offer free advice and ideas to our clients.

We understand that people buy from people they like, and in turn recommend us to others.

Just as we want to offer the best service possible, we only choose suppliers who will also go the extra mile. Timing is such an important factor in Direct Mail; you have to be able to rely on your suppliers.

We strive to know what is going on around us, and developments in the medium. It is important to know and talk with others in the Industry whose help – over the years – has been invaluable.

We are proactive and keep clients up to speed, particularly with postal opportunities, which should be any Mailing House’s area of expertise.

We are active DMA Members, part of the Strategic Mailing Partnership, and are committed to working for the good of the medium of Direct Mail, not just for the good of Mailbird.

Trust is very important. If we DO run into a problem our clients know that we won’t hide it under the carpet, but will try and resolve it honestly.

These are times of change – not least in the Direct Mail Industry. We produce frequent Management Accounts so we can respond quickly to factors that affect the business.

Our staff and culture come from employing family members and friends. Not exclusively, of course, but all our staff are very positive, and work very hard.

How about that, then? Look after your customers. Keep your staff happy. Know what you're doing and believe in it. Watch the money.

Just do it right.

I have no interest in Mailbird - just an interest in better business. They are at http://www.mailbird.co.uk/ - and Coral is a very nice lady.

Tesco stinks, Sainsbury and Waitrose deliver; with a salute to Rory Sutherland

2011-10-23T18:41:00.009+01:00

Unless you're in the business or slightly mad I don't suppose you spend much time following the battle between the supermarkets - but I am slightly mad, and occasionally hopping mad, too.

Last year I bought some foul smelling cod from Tesco, but they wouldn't give me my money back. There was a message on the receipt asking me to tell them how my "shopping experience" was - but when I told them I never even got a reply. When I had the same trouble with Sainsbury they gave me my money back - and a gift voucher.

Today I bought a sandwich from Waitrose and on the package I read a promise that if I was not satisfied, they would refund my money and give me a replacement. I had to read it twice to make sure. Yes: they'll give you your money back and a new sandwich.

People talk about "killer apps". That's what I bet is a killer guarantee.

People greatly underrate the power of the guarantee. Generally if you offer something good, the stronger your guarantee the better you'll do. Our cousins in the U.S. have, as ever, coined a fancy name for the reason why this is so. It is "risk reversal". The stronger the guarantee the less people worry about putting their hands in their pockets.

Waitrose sales for the week ending October 15th were 11.7% higher than the same week last year

***

I am just recovering from my annual nightmare - EADIM. What makes it a nightmare is not just the fear of everything going wrong, it is that sitting through all the other presentations, which I always do, is a bloody sight harder than making my own.

It's not half as hard, though, as what Rory Sutherland did on Thursday - fly in from New York, go home to freshen up then come and give us two hours of wisdom and hilarity in equal measure. A hero.

The big surprise from me this year was that less than half the delegates were from the U.K. and that it's almost impossible to get a decent bottle of wine in the Cavendish restaurant for under £30.

How to review copy, plus the Tin Piss-Pot for use of jargon. And we’ve been here before, folks – many times. Plus, if you want to meet me …

2011-10-19T08:11:00.009+01:00

Yesterday a client wrote saying that my copy was to be reviewed by various “stakeholders”. I wrote pleading with her not to use jargon.

I forgot to quote David Ogilvy’s rule: copy should only be reviewed by two people: the person who commissioned it, then once he or she is content, by someone very senior to make sure it’s OK. Otherwise the process is like being nibbled to death by ducks, as my old art director Marty Stein used to put it.

***

Today’s tin piss-pot for most imaginative use of meaningless jargon goes to the Creative Director of Interbrand in Australia, which has just won the Alzheimers’ Society account.

He said “to cut through the clutter of the charity landscape” they’ve decided on a “fighting spirit and stronger tone of voice at the heart of the new brand”.

"It is designed to create a national movement, not just another campaign," he said. "It features a flexible logo that changes and evolves to communicate different messaging. The identity is bold, simple and clear, and deliberately very cost effective to implement. Using two colours and often, just four words."

They are going to change everything from the stationery upwards. That should cost plenty of the donors' money. Don't ask what tests they will do, because I bet the answer is "none".

I want to know if the man, whose name is Michael Rigby, is telling the truth.

It's hard to tell, isn't it, as the statement is almost without meaning.

However, new research from Jochim Hansen of New York University and Michaela Wänke of the University of Basel reveals that besides irritating the hell out of customers and people we work with, jargon makes them think we are not telling the truth.

But here’s the kicker. The article, in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, is headed Truth From Language and Truth From Fit: The Impact of Linguistic Concreteness and Level of Construal on Subjective Truth.

Before you say another word, the a with two dots over it in Wänke is pronounced like an e. And she and her colleague get a special prize for the ironic use of jargon

***

I am reading a book set in the reign of Henry V111.

Just as Blair and Brown pissed away the largest surplus this country has ever had on foolish ventures, leaving us in debt, Henry pissed away the surplus his father Henry V11 left, plus whatever he could steal from the monasteries, on disastrous military capers.

To solve the problem he resorted to debasing the coinage – putting less silver in it. Nowadays this is called Quantitative Easing. In the early 1700’s Daniel Defoe described it as “debauching the currency.”

***

Tonight at 6:00 the attendees at EADIM will be gathering for drinks at The Cavendish in Jermyn Street. I will be giving a very short (hurrah) speech on 20 ways to improve your results by at least 20%.

If you want to join us, it costs £20 plus VAT on the door. At their prices, that's cheap.

Apryl gets the horrors - when all I want to do is help you all make money. So very unkind.

2011-10-16T20:55:00.008+01:00

Well, I don't know. Is there any faith left in this world?

As part of my rather self-interested crusade to raise innocent folks' chances of survival in the coming misery and maybe rid the world of a few rip-off artists I whacked out two emails about what I call my "tentacles".

The man to blame is my financial conscience Michael Carpenter, who's been trying to keep me out of the bankruptcy courts on and off for over 40 years.

The other day he said: “Why don’t you tell people about ALL the ways you can help people instead of just one or two? There are lots of things we do that you never mention.”

So I sent out something headed “Could one of my tentacles reach out to help you?” The tentacles are other things I have a finger in, if you'll forgive a bit of confused anatomy.

Then I emailed about a service that could instantly improve the response to your direct mail by 25-83%.

It is hand-addressing which one of my companies does. It works very well for:

Charities - especially if you want to look like you really do need money.

Selling to businesses – when you want your message to look highly personal.

Expensive, up-market products/services - when you want to make customers feel they’re getting a really personal letter.

They can even top and tail letters and hand-stamp "confidential" onto outer envelopes.

Then today I sent something out about saving up to 90% off data-feeds. This was actually a lie because we can save you even more.

If you do ecommerce you almost certainly need to run data feeds - the streams of data that come off your system and feed into shoppingcomparison sites, affiliate networks and the Google Merchant Centre.

The handful of firms that dominate this small specialist area charge ridiculous sums for tiny amounts of work.

You can pay up to £5,000 to build a feed and £1,500 a month to maintain it. Fine, if you're a big fat rich organisation.

But one of my companies runs a very straight-forward data feed service. They charge £500 to create a feed and £100 a month to maintain it.

Yes: one tenth as much as these pirates to set up, and less than one tenth as much to run it.

Anyhow, this use of the word tentacles really got to Apryl Parcher - a writer I've been corresponding with for yonks.

“Tentacles?” she said. "The image I get in my head is the peg-legged, octopus-bearded Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean. Rather sinister (shudders)."

Huh! Anyone'd think I let a mouse loose in her bedroom.

As I explained to her, "My tentacles are lovable, friendly, sweet, cuddly, helpful, imaginative, civilised, adorable, full of bounce, goodwill and bad jokes - think Sponge Bob Squarepants."

But also think making more money in hard times.

Live in trailer park? Desperate and literate - but stupid? Here’s how to get rich. Almost as good as stuffing envelopes.

2011-10-13T09:49:00.010+01:00

My friend Andrew Gadsden, "Saviour of Tea" - his business is selling tons of tea - forwarded a hilarious email message from someone called the PPC Web Spy.

The subject: “Can I hire you to write for me?” It read:

Hey Andrew, myself and over 2,400 others are looking to hire people that can write simple 300 word articles.

We'll pay you for every single article you write. There's no limit to how much we'll pay you. Write as much as you can, and make as much as you can.

Ok, so here's how it works:

1. Go here and create a free account:

2. Sign up to become a "writer" by clicking on the big blue write articles button.

Then start writing articles for people. Once you become a "top writer" (which doesn't take long at all) you'll be able to earn $5+ for each article you write. You could essentially spend a few hours writing articles and pay off ALL of your house bills in a couple of days!

There is literally no other guaranteed way to earn income, where you decide how much you want to write and earn. It's entirely up to you.

In the few weeks that iWriter has been open, I've already sent out close to $76,000 in payments to writers! Needless to say, you can make very good income doing this.

Go there now and sign up right away. You'll be glad you did.

Suck your dummy, you moron (sorry, I made that up)

***
At 75 I really should give up and leave everyone in peace or maybe become a "top writer" at $5 a time but here's why I keep bumbling on – messages like this that I got yesterday:

I am Mihai from Romania, an EADIM graduate from the first year of your program. I just want to share with you my last project, an online viral ad for a promotion for the efix gasoline.

In 10 days we got almost 150 000 views on video sharing channels and on facebook 18,000 people share it on their wall.

Name of the campaign is "Efix from one horse power up!": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7TOd0UgdrA

Very funny - and more to the point, very good.

***

Another illusion shattered …

Andrew Dumas wrote to me saying “I enjoy your blog entries immensely. Unfortunately, I suspect that the information you received concerning use of overseas call centers may be based on urban legend.

I recalled hearing something similar based on alleged U.S. law. A Google search yielded this link: http://www.hoax-slayer.com/ask-tranfer-uk-rep-law.shtml .”

Actually I had heard that, too. Yet as I have met Lesley Southgate and she said she'd tried it I assumed she was telling the truth. Mind you, she said she was put through to someone in Newcastle on Tyne.

The first time I met anyone from there was when I was a great deal younger, staying in a caravan by the sea.

I was standing at a juke box wearing my regulation greasy hair complete with quiff and, believe it or not, blue suede shoes. A lad said something to me in broad Geordie. He had to repeat it twice before I realised he was asking the time.

Today's little bucket of offal from the magical (but shrinking) world of marketers with lots of money to waste

2011-10-12T20:11:00.011+01:00

Lee Iacocca (remember him? He saved Chrysler for a bit) wrote something good: "If you want to succeed you'd better get on with people, because that's all we've got around here."

And Peter Drucker pointed out that there is only one profit centre in business - your customers.

Many folks as they lick their way up the corporate ladder tend to lose interest in customers and are too damned busy to study them. So they take refuge in the bullshit purveyed by agency planners and academic research.

Both often tell you things you should know already, such as that if you show an interest in customers they like it and buy more.

Isn't that amazing? All you have to do is deliver a better product or service and tell the right people about it in a way they find likable. Not necessarily easy, but very simple. Yet some think it is terra incognita.

Take an email my friend Martin Chilcott, marketing director cum laude, sent me the other day with the subject line We'd love you to join us - Empathy Benchmarking.

That got the old pulse racing, I can tell you. Then it went on, with more than its fair share of jargon and illiteracy.

Ok – most organisation now have something similar to either a Customer Satisfaction or Advocacy measure in place which helps us capture the Customer voice. However, most companies have no idea how their peoples’ attitudes and behaviours are making their customers feel, or how they are performing relative to competitors or parallel companies. Interestingly, and unlike many other measures, the empathy displayed by agents has been academically proven to correlate directly to profit.

Compathy Limited,SOCAPiE and Oxford Brookes University Business Schoolare working together to bring you the Somthing4Everyone Benchmarking Programme. Essentially it is a re-launch, and upgrade, of the Empathy Rating Index Programme run by Harding & Yorke between 2004-9 with the traditional empathy related questions, a new competency set and a series of ‘likelihood of referral’ questions which help organisations understand the key drivers behind traditional advocacy metrics. All the previous data captured on over 150 companies from 12 different industries semi-annually will be made available and the Empathy Licensees will be on hand to support root cause analysis, making the findings come alive and change intitiatives.

To participate, and to benefit from the in-depth analysis to be carried out by Oxford Brookes University Business School, you must either be a Member of SOCAPiE or be pre-sponsored by an Empathy Licensee.

SOCAPiE, a not-for-profit organisation, have put together some amazing discounted options for existing Members (participation from as little as £2,800 plus Vat) and combined new Membership and participation (from £3,650 plus Vat).

The Benchmark will cover 4 territories; UK & EMEA, Americas, ASIA and Australasia and is set to become the World’s most influential and strategically important research programme supporting the customer experience.

You really couldn't make it up, could you? But then again, why would you want to? I guess somebody buys this stuff. Why? And is something spelt without an e?

Grossly unfair! Immigrants to be tested on knowledge of British culture. Plus how to handle incomprehensible call centre people

2011-10-11T13:41:00.012+01:00

The Daily Mail is often good for a giggle, and so it proved this morning when I read that would-be immigrants are to be tested on British history and culture.

Questions (says the Daily Mail) will include asking who was Britain's Prime Minister at the outbreak of World War 2. I'll lay a bet that most will say Churchill - and be wrong.

This is all so unfair. Not only will immigrants be willing to work harder; they'll be better educated, too.

Meanwhile, a bit of useful info sent by Lesley Southgate, bless her.

If you call an 0800 number and end up talking to someone abroad - maybe in India, Pakistan, Ireland, etc. - you can ask very politely (this is not about trashing other cultures): "I'd like to speak to a customer service representative in the United Kingdom."

If the rep suggests talking to his/her manager, again politely say, "Thank you, but I'd like to speak to a customer service representative in the United Kingdom."

Guess what? You will be connected to a rep in the U.K. Lesley says that's the law, and it takes less than one minute to have your call re-directed. She put it to the test.

Lesley goes on "Imagine what would happen if every United Kingdom citizen insisted on talking to only UK phone reps from this day on". Then she says what a lot of jobs it would create, and suggests a viral campaign.

That's all very well, but would they know who was Prime Minister in 1939?

“Skidding about helplessly on the slippery surface of irrelevant creative brilliance” – David Ogilvy

2011-10-10T07:48:00.002+01:00

A few weeks ago I was invited to a grand dinner in New York to mark the centenary of David Ogilvy’s birth. I was in New York just before it took place, but had to fly back to London on the day. A shame.

Anyhow, the remark above is one of the great man’s more entertaining ones, though I am about to describe things that could never be called brilliant or creative – just irrelevant and wasteful. And whence did they originate? From banks and advertising agents, of course.

My eyes popped out like chapel hat pegs when I saw a full colour double page adwank in The Week, paid for by Credit Suisse – or rather their clients. It features the boss of Lindt chocolates grinning like a hyena behind a drink (and looking as though he’s had nine or ten) with a giant chocolate bear next to him.

How the hell they got him to make such a fool of himself is a mystery. Vanity, I guess. Beneath the picture it says “Lindt CEO ERNST Tanner salutes another year of growth. Credit Suisse has helped raise his company’s standing.”

This is, of course, 100% pure gold-plated, diamond-studded, 24 carat bollocks, straight off the top shelf.

How does your choice of bank affect your standing? You just hope the bastards won’t lose a few billion by not looking at what their staff are up to. Anyhow, after the UBS catastrophe you would think that even allowing for the total ignorance of marketing displayed by almost all banks, a Swiss one would be smart enough not to piss away people’s hard-earned francs on such boastful tosh.

But no: they have other ads in the series, with a complete website devoted to explaining the amount of Tanner’s time and his clients’ money squandered on this exercise in corporate masturbation. If I were a Credit Suisse client I would be asking questions like, “How much is old Ernst taking home each year?” Possibly followed up by “If he wants to jerk off in public I hope this was done on his time, not ours.”

At least that ad is beautifully laid out, though.

Another for Saxo Bank in a Money Week supplement devoted to financial gambling – er, online trading - is just as stupid, but hideous, too. The headline is “ONE GOAL MULTIPLE WAYS TO ACHIEVE IT and it shows two men wearing rubber suits sloshing through some water. One is a Triathlon champion, and good for him.

Under this absurd picture it says THE MULTI ASSET PLATFORM, FOR THE ACTIVE TRADER (why the comma?) then some direly pretentious copy, fortunately reversed out to make it hard to read.

Great Gods and Little Fishes! Doesn’t anyone in these firms or their agencies know even 1% of what advertising is for, what works and what doesn’t? Have none of them studied, even for a spare five minutes, the thing they get so grossly overpaid for?

Boastful piffle does you no more good in advertising than in real life; pictures of runners do not make you think about making money. Actually if they’re wearing shiny rubber suits and you’re inclined that way they may even make you think about sex.

Incidentally, I would have been born with a silver spoon in my mouth if my Grandfather hadn’t lost all his money betting on Cotton Futures in 1920 – but that’s another subject.

My favourite Poles, the power of brands – and slightly less rain in Spain

2011-10-09T10:47:00.011+01:00

In the 1960’s I fell in love with a Polish girl, and discovered that the Poles, whom I had always imagined, God knows why, a calm, slightly gloomy lot, like the Swedes, were - in her case anyhow - a fiery, passionate lot.

They seemed more like what I imagined the Italians to be. She nearly killed me once – and I still have the scar to prove it. As I now live with an Italian I shall say no more, but for a desperate stretch during my seven lost years in the ‘70’s I sold investments on the phone for a Polish Count.

A former cavalry colonel, he was one of those gallant maniacs who charged the German tanks on horseback in 1939. When I knew him he was 60 and living with a girl of 19, with whom he had a baby. An inspiration. He drank a lot, as I did. He gave me some good advice: don’t drink on one day of the week. And he used to do keep-fit exercises. I have emulated him in both habits. Thank you, Kepinski. I am sure you are in heaven.

I only dislike one Pole, who runs the Polish DMA, for which he is entirely unqualified. More recently the Poles I have got to know at all well have been my cleaners, Kasia in London and now Anna. Kasia has a rough time, mainly because her husband is a selfish bastard. Anna is an orphan who seems to have survived a really rough time and emerged with a sunny disposition – besides being rather beautiful.

Yesterday she came and showed my beloved how to make Pirogi, which are like giant Polish ravioli. She brought Polish flour and Polish sunflower oil – both, I imagine, no better than the British versions, but more expensive.

Such is the power of the brand in people’s minds. I was on the Ogilvy and Mather board when communism was swept away, and there was much discussion of the way in which Western brands would conquer all – but they haven’t.

Anyhow, now that we’re all suffering from, among other things, the baleful policies of the European Central Bank’s one-size-doesn’t-fit-all straightjacket, many places in Europe are pretty cheap, which brings me to something I mentioned yesterday – my crazy idea of seeing how many people would like to come to Southern Spain for a copy seminar.

I plan to include a very good hotel deal and free car hire and the weather will be slightly better than the U.K. I need 40 people to make it worthwhile, though.

Children are suffering because of these crass oafs - or how to make 100% sure your marketing money is wasted

2011-10-08T20:51:00.005+01:00

I sometimes have an uneasy feeling that there is a great alternative recruitment agency in the depths below which seeks out idiots for big jobs.

They probably run ads headed “A unique money-making opportunity for gormless twats.”

Such seems the only conceivable way a man could have become, some years ago, a senior marketing man at Saga, the people who flog stuff to the elderly.

When Saga started up it was something new – well, fairly new: there was already the American Association of Retired People which it copied in many ways.

If you are lucky or clever enough to have or steal an idea like that, a trained chimpanzee could do the marketing director’s job. The man I dealt with, besides being obnoxious, was a few evolutionary stages behind the chimpanzee.

Not all of us are blessed with native wit. Not all of us are given a smidgeon of commonsense. But some of us really are thicker than pigshit, as was this man.

He had been persuaded by his database man to get me to come and review their creative work, which was mostly rubbish (you don’t need good creative if you have a great idea and a big customer file). I liked the database guy, so I did the job on the cheap.

However, to analyse why some of the rubbish was slightly better than the rest I needed to know the context. Who was it sent to? When? What was going on in the market? What were the results? What was it tested against? (The answer to the last question was nothing, of course, as they were clueless – still true of most marketers).

But the man wanted me to guess what the results might have been. So I could only do half a job – not helped because he was a bully and his staff were all frightened of asking questions. The man who had arranged the talk was embarrassed, gave me a slap up lunch and has gone on to thrive and prosper.

That day was a waste – but one eclipsed for arrogance and folly by the recent actions of some oiks at a children’s charity. A friend of mine offered to do some work on a results basis. At the last minute the fundraising boss said he couldn’t attend and sent a substitute – without bothering to brief him, the lazy sod. My friend had to do that, and afterwards the substitute, who was in charge of legacies, agreed to take matters further

My friend said: it is hard for me to comment on this area of your business without seeing the kind of pack you send to supporters. The arrogant buffoon not only gave no information: he said my friend should find out for himself – do his “homework”.

Direct mail is not a public medium. Even God would find it impossible to know a) what had been sent out b) when c) in what circumstances d) with what results e) what the competition was doing f) what the average legacy was – in fact all the things you need to know to do a good job.

The man actually wrote: “You cannot expect me to devote my time to helping you to win my business. That cannot possibly be my role.”

What a useless prick. He brings a new depth of meaning to the word unemployable His job is to do anything and everything to help anyone who could help raise money for children – not make it hard for them.

But as Goethe put it, with idiots even God is helpless. And as God might put it, children are suffering and dying because of idiots like him.

There are an awful lot of people like that around. I would shoot the lot.

There's no hogwash like marketing hogwash ... and a possible alternative

2011-10-07T13:57:00.008+01:00

I have always thought it was hard to beat the kind of twaddle marketing people come out with, and that the absolute nadir is reached by agency people.

Here, for instance, is a quote from a presentation made by one of the leading agencies on Bristol (don't laugh too hard - this is a subsidiary of one of the world's top ten agencies).

Before you read it I would like you to imagine the client's situation. You may even feel that way yourself. They - like any other business - need income. There is a dire recession. Their kind of enterprise is under very heavy pressure; quite a few similar organisations are shutting up shop. They need results - and fast!

And they get this:

“I think we would be able to generate some very useful thinking for you on 'future' proofing the business more and in helping you engage further with key consumer groups and in the provision of content + product which could be commercialised/monetised and have a long tail income stream generated from some sustainable initiatives”.

What in the holy name of bollocks is that? And how about single quotation marks round the word future? Normally when you do that it signifies you don't really mean what you're saying. Then again, if you aren't really saying anything useful, who cares?

Hogwash is not dished out only by agencies, though, nor only in Bristol. This morning my Aussie mate Malcolm Auld drew my attention to a piece about the banks over there.

The big four banks have spent 19% more on media advertising in the past 12 months but it has done little for customer satisfaction.

And why, pray, should it? People are satisfied by what you do, not what you say. And since most bank advertising is just lies, they'd probably have done better keeping quiet, giving the money to their customers or improving service.

The one that increased spending most - Commonwealth Bank (30% up) - got the least benefit. By one measure "satisfaction" was up 0.6% or down 0.1% - insignificant statistically. People were either as pissed off as before, or a bit more so or a bit less so. One problem may have been that the more they lied, the more they pissed people off. Another may be that the bank had no idea what advertising is for.

Andy Lark, Chief Commonwealth Marketing Muppet, said they did not expect any "correlation between advertising and satisfaction, which was driven by actual banking experience". So why did he advertise?

"The job of advertising is to help people fall in love with our brands," he said.

Uh? The idea of falling in love with a bank is bizarre. But the idea of falling in love with a bank's brand is a phantasmagorical perversion. The agency in Bristol would have a place for him.

Anyhow here we have two problems.

The chocolate teapot at the Bristol agency can't write and doesn't know what people want advertising to do.

The other man doesn't know what advertising ought to do - and is a banker.

I can help here - indeed I did help 106 people - in Bristol as it happens in June

The easiest and cheapest way to get your advertising to do what it should do - sell more stuff without spending more money - is to run better copy, which is what I was explaining in Bristol. Better copy can make a huge difference.

Unfortunately lots of people couldn't or wouldn't come to Bristol. Some said, "Come to London". Others suggested Manchester, Edinburgh, Dublin, Birmingham.

I have a better idea if you're interested, because it will be cheaper, and everyone can come as easily as coming to London. Also I'll throw in the odd freebie.

You may think it's crazy, but why not come to Spain?

What d'you say to that?

I'm dead serious.

The great SEO rip-off - don't sign a contract: I have a better idea

2011-10-05T17:08:00.008+01:00

Do you get a lot of people trying to sell you SEO? I get regular emails - and another agency which has the misfortune of me for its chairman gets people ringing to sell it all the time.

The sales idea is to make you feel a pathetic no-hoper because you're not at the top of the rankings. It reminds me of the Great CRM Rip Off, and before that the Great Database Rip-Off, not to mention the Great We'll Build You a Pretty Website That Couldn't Sell Shit If It Tried Rip-Off.

They all work on the safe assumption that many marketers feel they should have one of these shiny things without knowing what they're for, let alone how they work.

My partner takes great joy in probing these SEO rogues on what they actually deliver. It soon becomes apparent that the answer is not a lot.

As he says, "Poor fools. I don't think a lot of them know what direct marketing is let alone what a direct marketing agency is. The thing is, SEO/SEM has become this mystical dark art which practitioners don't like to reveal their methods about. I have noticed huge numbers of businesses signing up to ridiculous deals where they commit to stupid sums of money for very little in the way of work."

He then adds, "If I'm honest I'm probably a bit jealous that there are people making money for doing nothing - something I've always struggled to do."

What's happening is that lots of people are signing up for SEO contracts where the "SEO agency" does little more than a few tweaks to their site in the first month and then sits around until they get rumbled about 18 months later.

If you're interested, here's a new and original approach. It is called A Fair Deal

For £900 a month you get an IT graduate working full-time on your site - optimising the copy and code and building links with full monthly and instant online reporting.

You can sub divide this into chunks of 40 hours. So you can buy 40, 80, 120, 160 200, etc hours a month.

And the results are extremely impressive. They have never yet failed to get anyone onto page 1 of Google for any keyword within about six months.

If you want to know more about this, two people at EADIM (which I cease promoting after the end of tomorrow) will be talking about SEO. One is among the the world's leading authorities. The other is the man who put together the fair deal I just referred to.

Would you believe one old seaside video could build an internet business? Plus a simple thought about investment

2011-10-02T12:01:00.007+01:00

Did you see a video I made the other day about the mysterious word Buckshee?

In it I mentioned a man who had built a very successful business after watching a video made 20 odd years ago.

I have never seen the video. All I know is that it was of a talk I did at Brighton University – about an hour or so long, I think.

The firm that video helped to build is called Doyouspain.com – a brilliant name, by the way. It is entirely internet-based and the founder, Jose-Maria Gaillet Fort has done so well he now operates in several other countries

I asked him if he’d make a video telling his story. When you watch it you may say it sounds a bit rehearsed. Of course it is. Wouldn’t you rehearse if English wasn’t your first language?

Here it is.

I have never met or even heard of Jose-Maria until this spring, when he came to see me for our branding day in Leicester. Then he came to the copy day in Bristol. And as you can hear, he plans to come to London for EADIM.

After Bristol in June he asked me for some advice. Then I sent to see him in August. And since then, as you can see, his results have improved by 30%.

Quite a few people say I have helped them one way or another. Some sold their businesses for millions (one for £100 million). Others are happily trading on – one I interviewed last year has a business turning over £20 million plus a year; another built the largest loans business in the U.K. The world's leading internet marketing teacher, Ken McCarthy, says he was inspired by reading one of my books in the New York Public Library.

Could I help you? Jose-Maria’s results improved within weeks. Other successes were over a period of years.

But the easiest way to find out how much better you might do is by spending a little time – a day, or two, or even three - with me at EADIM.

Here’s the original Buckshee video – just write back to me, Drayton@Draytonbird.com saying “Buckshee” if you’re interested.

Why did I talk about investment? Not just because I have worked for many successful firms in that area, but because of a simple truth.

Investment is all about what you put in versus the likely rewards. Two things are for sure.

1. No investment, no rewards.

2. One investment never loses value. It never ceases to pay dividends. It pays off through boom and bust. It is the best investment you can ever make. It is in you.

Gorillas make £437,000 - plus a few Euro-moans from the aged scribe

2011-10-01T08:19:00.010+01:00

I watched a story the other day about the remarkable degree to which gorillas behave like and can communicate with humans.

There has recently been a plague of fancifully decorated gorillas in Bristol, placed in prominent places to raise money for the zoo. Everybody loved them and until a week or so ago I used to walk past the one in the picture on my way to the station.

These amiable relatives of ours raised some £437,300 at auction, the other day. My favourite was the Elvis Gorilla at the National Express bus station, but I can't find a picture of him. He was sold for £10,300 - the third highest sum.

The big difference besides appearance seems to be that gorillas are much nicer than humans. Perhaps they are also more intelligent than some of the waddling masses of tattooed flab I often see wandering our city streets.

I am sure they have a greater sense of what is fair than our governors.

Here in Bristol which is ironically called a City of Sanctuary a lady called Khetiwe Mashavave who has never done anyone any harm is threatened with deportation to Zimbabwe rather than being allowed to stay in Bristol.

The other day I signed a petition to try and keep her here. She is a churchgoer and a real contributor to the community. If she goes back she will face the thoughtful attentions of Mugabe's thugs. (What would have happened if Zimbabwe, rather than Libya, had oil?)

Meanwhile, thanks to the bizarre ideas of the European Court of Injustice, we are required to keeping a clutch of terrorist bastards here at incredible cost because nasty things may happen to them if they are sent back to where they came from.

This is all wrong. Their religion is based on the Old Testament idea of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. They who wish to live by the sword should die by the sword.

If Europe as presently arranged falls apart, the one thing that should be rejected for good is the primacy of a legal system alien to our culture. Apart from anything else, it's not good for business. Until Italy began implementing all the constricting labour laws it had one of the fastest growing economies in Europe. Ever since it has slowly but surely moved into reverse.

These lunatic laws, which actively discourage firms from employing people, are being implemented here. Apart from providing lots of work for lawyers and the least useful department in most firms - "Human Resources" - they will do little but harm.

Nobody knows how the Great European Cock-up is going to end, but if we're going to be fucked around by politicians, at least let them be British ones.

The funniest direct marketing speech ever - and James Hammond

2011-09-30T10:39:00.009+01:00

I cannot say the words direct marketing often reduce me to paroxysms of mirth.

However, a speech I saw a few years ago did.

It was at a direct marketing awards event which I attended because someone else was paying.

To be honest the idea of giving awards for direct marketing always seemed to me a bit ludicrous - rather like giving prizes for sewage disposal. It's just a job, and somebody has to do it.

But I was glad I went to this event, because the speaker expressed my views, but in wonderfully witty fashion.

He stood up and said, more or less "We all, no matter how humble, have ambitions in life ... things we aspire to ... things we dream may happen to us one day if we are very lucky... And my dream has always been to present the annual DMA awards for direct marketing."

After that he really took the piss.

Stephen Fry was, of course, the man who made me laugh - and usually does whenever I see him. Anyhow, on Sunday night on BBC2 at 90 p .m. Mr. Fry is talking (of all things) about call centres - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015qqkl.

And for a fleeting instant my colleague James Hammond, he who wrote Branding Your Business - one of the very few sensible books about the subject - will be putting in his two cents' worth, I think on the subject of accents. He's the one on the left in the picture, and you can meet him if you come to EADIM.

I have mentioned that you ought to be there, haven't I? If you are still playing with the idea, just email me, Drayton@Draytonbird.com and I will lay before your wondering eyes an assortment of suggestions.

Which reminds me, a man from India rang me up yesterday to tell me there was something wrong with my computer, which there isn't.

I'm afraid I wasn't very polite, though I do feel sorry for these poor people who are usually underpaid, given impossible targets and badly briefed with lousy scripts - besides being barely comprehensible.

Something buckshee after the usual touches of the ludicrous – including Beauty and the Beasts

2011-09-29T11:38:00.006+01:00

I had a couple of good laughs the other day – one about a love triangle, the other about a predictable display of political hypocrisy from the younger Milipede.

The first was a story about the wife of an MP who stole his mistress’s kitten, which has not been seen since.

Life is so often unfair don’t you think? A malicious soul might think the main female human characters, both carrying a fair amount of surplus avoirdupois could apply with every hope of success to play the Ugly Sisters and the MP looks well, weird. The kitten, on the other hand, is (or was) rather beautiful. In fact she was called Beauty, poor thing.

Young Ed was, I see, ladling out the schmaltz at his party conference – which if they keep him on may be a pre-emptive wake - about his dear old mum and dad, and calling for a less predatory society.

Perhaps he could set an example by donating the extra dosh he and his brother managed to finagle by avoiding tax when they inherited their dear old mum and dad’s house.

I apologise if all that sounded a bit waspish, but I had a bit of a thick head when I drafted it, kindly donated by a client who bought the extra, fatal pint when I wasn’t looking.

He also told me I wasn’t promoting my EADIM event with enough zeal, which reminded me that I haven’t said much about it at all here, and even worse, haven’t even mentioned something some people may really appreciate.

It is called buckshee advice. If you don’t know what buckshee means, watch this.

If you’ve got any question about your business that is driving you crazy, this is a chance to get some well-informed answers.

The question is, what is my buckshee advice worth?

One answer is that I normally charge £1,000 an hour for one to one advice.

But the truth is, only you can give the right answer. And to arrive at it you have to ask yourself the right question.

That question is this: how much would it be worth to you to solve that problem that’s driving you crazy?

· You could be wondering why your website doesn’t make you any money.

· You could be wondering why nobody replies to your emails

· You could be wondering that SEO you coughed up so much money for has made little or no difference

· You could be wondering why your direct mail flops.

· You could be doing well, but wonder how you could do better (the best people always do)

· You could even wonder whether you’re in the right business

Over the years my partners and I have helped just about every kind of business you can think of, and maybe some you couldn’t.

In the audience on that day will be a man who has built the second largest business of its kind in one of the largest countries in Europe – in a viciously competitive market.

He says he owes it all to an old video of me making a speech at Brighton University about how to market properly.

Maybe I can help you too.

So think how much the right advice could be worth to you – then come and get it “buckshee”.

I would be amazed if it’s not worth more than the cost of your attendance at EADIM.

Just to remind you what buckshee is all about, here’s that video again.

And if you just want to come for that day, well we can cut a deal for you if you hurry (seats are limited as The Cavendish is a boutique hotel).

Alternatively, you can always carry on as usual and hope the current economic nightmare doesn’t wipe you out.

If you’d like to attend, just email Chloe@Draytonbird.com one word: Buckshee.

P.S. And if you don't know what schmaltz is, it is yiddish slang for phoney sentiment.

Transcendental bollocks: the new hocus-pocus … or the rise of hyper-garbage

2011-09-27T12:31:00.005+01:00

Don’t you think it strange that someone you never heard of with not the slightest talent - just a desire to make a fool of themselves in a show you’d never want to watch - is called a “star”.

Yet such was the case when yesterday I was ploughing my way through my copy of the free paper, Metro. It referred to a participant in the exceptionally nasty TV show Big Brother.

I call this linguistic inflation and it’s everywhere.

It’s what they used to call hocus-pocus: words used to make things seem more important (and therefore valuable) than they are.

Take the new army of the overpaid. Senior bean-counters have become Chief Financial Officers. Managing directors are now Chief Executive Officers. The closest parallel I can think of is the uniformed commissionaires who used to stand outside cinemas – such a joke they were the staple of cartoonists.

Or take this new thing you’re aware of – even an old fogey like me is aware of – where you point your phone at a tag and find out about something.

It’s been around for quite a while but only now is it becoming really important as it depends on enough smart phones being around – with enough people who know how to use them (count me out for the moment; I’m just learning).

But if you were to believe something I read last night this is so much more. It means I can “engage in a richer, more immersive experience than was previously possible in today's highly efficient commerce environment.”

It sounds like one of those dunk the whole body baptism jobs, don't you think? But with a little less general ecstasy.

I’m actually planning to test it myself for something I sell, but I’m pretty sure that sort of tripe does more harm than it helps.

Logo insanity stalks the land - and Mr. Miliband moves us all to tears

2011-09-25T08:59:00.006+01:00

How does design affect results?

Take the 2011 Olympics logo - the visual equivalent of dogshit on a pavement. It's hard to believe it can have done anything but harm, managing as it does to combine so deftly the hideous with the incomprehensible.

This thought occurred to me because yesterday I read - or was it a freakish dream? - that the Labour Party, currently having a back-slapping get-together in Scotland, has been discussing its logo, a pretty red rose.

This visual masterpiece was introduced by Peter "where did all your millions come from, dearie?" - Mandelson. I doubt that it resonates much among the kilt-wearing faithful or the rugby players of Wales, but I doubt even more that cosmetic changes would help.

There was talk about whether the rose should have thorns on its stalk or no stalk at all, it seems. This is the sort of bilge that should be kept for meetings among advertising agency poseurs, but the fact is that no symbol can make much difference to the facts.

These are that with the unions about to run amok the Labour party is likely to end up in deep sewage for at least a decade. Last time they tried this on they let in Mrs Thatcher. But when eventually the country was fed up with the Tories nothing could have helped John Major - a much underrated man - as he came up against one of the best liars of the last century - the Great Bliar.

Nothing can undo the folly of the Brown years. And nothing can overcome the fact that Ed Miliband has all the charisma of a supermarket check out operator.

The only hope lies in Cameron doing something exceptionally stupid - always on the cards.

But you do have to wonder about someone so remote from reality as our boy Ed, who in a quite exceptionally deranged speech said of The Great McToad:

"He has an incredible legacy: he improved the lives of millions of people here and around the world.

I am proud to call him my friend. We should pay tribute today to Gordon Brown for his leadership of our party and our country."

After that came a steady trickle of oratorical vomit:

"I remember visiting Gordon at his home in Fife and looking over the River Forth where my father served in the Royal Navy during the war.

Along with my mum, he came as a refugee from the Nazis and built a life here.

It was his values - it is my mum’s values - that explain why I am standing on this stage today."

And so on.

I wonder how many who heard that had read Alastair Darling's damning description of what Brown is really like.

Or for that matter how many reflected that little Jug Ears is there not because of his Mum and Dad but because with the help of the unions he demolished his brother's chances.

Sheer delight and a dash of misery from Bill Bryson

2011-09-24T11:58:00.005+01:00

Schubert and Beethoven were walking down a street one day when they heard someone playing Mozart.

Beethoven turned to his companion and said "You and I will never write anything that good."

I feel about the same every time I read Bill Bryson. I think I have read all his books and they fill me with a melange of joy and depression.

Joy because he writes so bloody well; depression because I don't. I think one of his best qualities is the way he manages to find so many funny anecdotes.

His latest, "Home", tells the story of Sir John Lubbock, a friend of Charles Darwin, who among other excellent things is responsible for Bank Holidays, which came in when previously the average British worker only got Sundays and Christmas off.

(Come to think of it, when I started the working week was five and half days long).

Lubbock also saved Stonehenge for us when it was about to be shipped off in bits to America.

But what endears him most to me is his eccentricity. He once spent three months trying to teach his dog to read.

How excellent!

Maybe someone should try to find out how he went about it. It might help in some of our schools.

A timely message bearing in mind the antics of Mr.Tindall

2011-09-23T08:43:00.006+01:00

Who said rugby players weren't intelligent?

Jono Gibbs, Chiefs "Nobody in Rugby should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."

Phil Waugh "We actually got the winning try three minutes from the end but then they scored."

Jerry Collins "I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body."

Tony Brown "That kick was absolutely unique, except for the one before it which was identical."

Rodney So'ialo, Hurricanes, on University "I'm going to graduate on time, no matter how long it takes."

Colin Cooper, Hurricanes head coach."You guys line up alphabetically by height." And, "You guys pair up in groups of three, then line up in a circle."

Chris Masoe (Hurricanes) on whether he had visited the Pyramids during his visit to Egypt ."I can't really remember the names of the clubs that we went to."

Colin Cooper on Paul Tito "He's a guy who gets up at six o'clock in the morning regardless of what time it is."

Kevin Senio ( Auckland ), on Night Rugby vs Day Games "It's basically the same, just darker."

David Nucifora ( Auckland ) talking about Troy Flavell "I told him, 'Son, what is it with you... Is it ignorance or apathy?' He said, 'David, I don't know and I don't care.'

David Holwell (Hurricanes) when asked about the upcoming season: "I want to reach for 150 or 200 points this season, whichever comes first."

Ma'a Nonu "Colin has done a bit of mental arithmetic with a calculator."

Tana Umaga "I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father."

Doc Mayhew "Sure there have been injuries and deaths in rugby, but none of them serious."

Anton Oliver "If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again."

Ewan McKenzie "I never comment on referees and I'm not going to break the habit of a lifetime for that prat."

Murray Mexted (clearly a contender for Mastermind):

(1) "Andy Ellis the 21 year old, who turned 22 a few weeks ago"

(2) "He scored that try after only 22 seconds - totally against the run of play."

(3) "I would not say he (Rico Gear) is the best left winger in the Super14, but there are none better."

(4) "Well, either side could win it, or it could be a draw."

(5) "Strangely, in slow motion replay, the ball seemed to hang in the air for even longer."

AND THE "Piece de resistance'

Murray Deaker: "Have you ever thought of writing your autobiography?" Tana Umaga "On what?"

Google hypocrisy: “Do as I say, not as I do.”

2011-09-22T05:56:00.005+01:00

One sure way to get slapped by Google is having, crude, hand drawn arrows on a page with not much content.

I love them because they work a treat. Anything that interrupts visually does.

Google hates them because “they don’t enrich the user's experience”. So what was on yesterday's Google screen?

A bloody great big scrawled arrow to promote google+. Well, fancy that.

Was my experience enriched? Yes. I laughed, and remembered this:

"Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue - Oscar Wilde, I think.

How the wrong tone (plus a dash of illiteracy and a little overpromise) can kill your copy. And why I like recessions

2011-09-21T03:18:00.010+01:00

Well, I had an excellent evening yesterday with Sarah Shaw Tatoun who used to be the pub critic of a Prague publication. The job of my dreams

But before that I finished drafting a long interview piece for Australia's Direct mag, including this about how marketers are responding to the recession.

Many have switched more and more online (I have, for a start – 80% of my work and 95% of my own promotion is online).

Unfortunately very few have the faintest idea what they‘re doing and are easily seduced by promises that one magic bullet will solve all problems. Once it was the database; then it was CRM. Now it’s adwords or SEO.

It’s no use winning on search if what people end up on – your site or landing page - doesn’t harvest names. It’s no use harvesting names if you don’t sell to them.

I quite like recessions. They kill the foolish and encourage the canny; people are forced to try and get better results, which happens to be a speciality of mine.

But on the matter of tone mentioned in the heading, here is how not to get a reply - from me, anyhow.

It is a message from someone improbably called Sofia Rockims, who equally improbably claims to have a university education.

Hello Mate,

We have a SEO discount offer going for the following package: -

1: Want to increase your Google ranking?
2: Want to get huge twitter followers and facebook Fans?
3: Want effective text for your website? Also Increase the social media presences.
4: We are a professional SEO company and can get you top ten google results for top five keywords of your choice within three months, with complete solutions for all your problems.
5: We also build websites... if you are interested please let me know?

Our Best rates for this are: - USD $199 per month per project at beginning of every month. if you are interested please let me know?

Why would I let someone who can't write presentable English loose on the text of one of my websites? Do you think that an attractive woman (which Sofia allegedly and improbably is in Facebook) would call someone they never met "mate"?

In any case few things irritate me more than idiots I've never met calling me mate - it kills any faint interest even before I start reading.

I think "Sofia" is a male working from a dark room somewhere in Uttar Pradesh. The automatic response is, "How about you kiss my arse, for starters?"

The blind leading the blind

2011-09-19T09:56:00.005+01:00

Someone I never heard of just invited me to a "leadership development programme" starting with the usual bow to management-bollocks.

"Engaged employees deliver constantly better performance in business". What's the matter with the married ones?

More to the point, why do people who have never led anyone anywhere, except maybe up the odd beckoning creek think themselves qualified to teach others how to go about it?

And by the way, we don't need that many leaders. the ones we have seem to be fucking things up just fine.

H. L. Mencken strikes a chord with me: "The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology."

Here's another, since I mentioned our current leaders.

"A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker."

Uriah Heap invades the kitchen. “Would you prefer your dish slimy, oily or just grovelling, Sir?”

2011-09-18T12:42:00.005+01:00

Perhaps the first money I can recall making was cooking in my parents’ restaurant.

I made pork chops stuffed with ham, sage and cheese. Very few deaths were reported.

The restaurant which was above the pub was in the Good Food Guide from its very first year – 1952 – and I have always been a keen trencherman. So much so that I once wrote a piece for the Ogilvy house magazine entitled I lunch for England.

Back in 1952, Britain was pretty much hell for gourmets - few of my mother's dishes would get through the first round now, though her steak, kidney and oyster pie was pretty special, as was her Lancashire hot pot.

Now, however, the food is pretty good – though absurdly overpriced. (£100 a head? come off it).

One thing that mars Britain’s gastronomic revival (we were very good in medieval times) is the tripe served up by critics, who seem to delight in showy ignorance of the English language.

One word they all love is “unctuous”. Christopher Hirst in the Independent used it to describe some of the grub at The Black Swan in Helmsley – one of the only 20 British restaurants which has been in the Guide Michelin since its first issue a century ago.

Unctuous means ingratiating, sycophantic, obsequious, grovelling, smug, phoney, slimy, smarmy creepy or oily.

Uriah Heap was quintessentially unctuous, but I’m not sure I want my first course to be.

(If you want a phenomenally good meal at a sane price, go to Flinty Red, down the road from me in Bristol.)

Research reveals yet another blinding glimpse of the obvious - if you know anything about selling,

2011-09-16T10:17:00.015+01:00

My friend Michael Rhodes is the most diligent researcher into the weird and wacky world of the internet I know.

Yesterday he sent me a piece headed "Mixed Feelings – How To Cultivate Emotional Engagement In Web Design" from a blog called kissmetrics.

As you can expect from the headline, it is replete with all the usual jargon. "Psychology suggests" it reveals, "that most people buy according to how they feel about a product (their emotions) rather than logic."

Well, you won't get very far in this world if you don't know that everything human beings do is driven by emotion. They go on to say "Cultivating an emotional bond with your customers is important—and it’s becoming more difficult to do. If your website isn’t tuned to resonate with your audience’s emotions, you could be losing business."

Any competent copywriter knows that emotion beats logic every time, I have no idea why it should be any more difficult now than it was, nor have I seen any indication that it is. I find it rather easy, to be honest. However, if you avoid phrases like tuned to resonate, it's a good start.

Anyhow the blog showed a chart based on Plutchik's Wheel of emotion - rather useful for those who don't understand which emotions make people do things. If you can't read it, look on the internet - Plutchik is not the most common name. Crazy name, crazy guy ...

Meanwhile, if you want sell shed-loads of stuff, you have to understand one rather tricky element, to explain which, here's a little video.

Well, do you really give a f**k? This little graph, clearly based on years of rigorous academic study, may give you the answer

2011-09-14T08:03:00.002+01:00

A friend from South Africa occasionally sends me stuff that brings a wry smile, a quiet chortle or even a joyous belly-laugh.

But this particular fruit of his research brought me to the startling realisation that I really am very odd indeed.

Not only do I give a fuck - I do so with greater fury and vehemence as every year passes.

Maybe I should seek help. Or pay to get a banker or politician run over. I must give it some thought.

Anyhow, just as I'm about to plumb the murkiest depths of gloom I always find something comes along to cheer me up.

The other day I saw my more or less crazy but brilliant friend Jo Stowell who has just had a beautiful book of her photos produced.

The rather excellent copy at the beginning is, in my considered view, one of the best examples of that sort of this I have ever seen, possibly because I wrote it.

But I was not responsible for the extraordinarily good design. I don't have the talent. But I believe it was by a lady called Annabelle, who I have never met or even spoken to.

She works with a printer called EPC Direct, www.epcdirect.co.uk - and I've never heard of them before either. They are lucky to have her.

Don't know how true it is - but it's bloody funny

2011-09-14T06:44:00.013+01:00

Judy Wallman, a genealogy researcher in southern California, was looking into her family tree. She discovered that Senator Harry Reid's great-great uncle, Remus Reid, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889.

Judy and Harry Reid share this common ancestor.

The only known photograph of Remus shows him standing on the gallows in Montana territory.

On the back of the picture is this: 'Remus Reid, horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison 1885, escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged in 1889.'

So Judy recently e-mailed Senator Harry Reid for information about their great-great uncle.

Harry Reid's staff sent back the following biographical sketch:

"Remus Reid was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory . His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to government service, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed."

I think this is all made up, but would you trust Harry Reid? The face is the mirror of the soul.

Talking of which I derived great joy from the story - definitely true - about our own dear Chancellor of the Exchequer's coke-snorting fun and games with a lady of the night. What a total dick he looks in the pictures. I wouldn't trust him to run a whelk stall, let alone what's left of our tattered.economy.

On the other hand, how could he do worse than the Bliar and Twat McBroon?

Is truth stranger than fiction? Here's another dash of religious fervour - true this time

2011-09-13T07:14:00.006+01:00

Curvin O'Riellly who used to work at Ogilvy and before that Y & R tells a true story relating to the one I posted earlier:

This reminds me of something that happened years ago at Y&R.

My creative director, Tony Isidore, and a couple of his partners, Bob Elgort and Marv Lefkowitz, had created an absolutely sensational campaign for the NY Urban Coalition. The tagline was famous: “Give jobs. Give money. Give a damn.”

Predictably, the network censors objected to the word “damn.” So the agency said, “Okay, tell you what. Go see Father O’What’s His Name (I was never told his name) at the archdiocese.”

The good father talked with the network censors, nodding his understanding of their problem with the word “damn.”

“You know,” he said in his brogue as he leaned forward, “I too have been having a problem with ‘damn.’ I think it’s completely inappropriate for a cause as serious as the Urban Coalition. I think the tagline should be ‘Give a shit.’”

What a pleasure to see idiot censors done down for a change.

A little religious enthusiasm from my friend George

2011-09-13T02:10:00.002+01:00

A crusty old man walks into the local Catholic church and says to the secretary, "I would like to join this damn church."

The astonished woman replies, "I beg your pardon, Sir. I must have misunderstood you. What did you say?"

"Listen up, damn it. I said I want to join this damn church!"

"I'm very sorry sir, but that kind of language is not tolerated in this church."

The secretary leaves her desk and goes into the priest's study to inform him of her situation. The priest agrees that the secretary does not have to listen to that foul language.

They both return to her office and the priest asks the old geezer, "Sir, what seems to be the problem here?"

"There is no damn problem," the man says. "I just won 20 million dollars in the damn lottery and I want to join this damn church to get rid of some of this damn money."

"I see," said the priest. "And is this bitch giving you a hard time?

Getting sex when you're ugly - and a tale of my imcompetence

2011-09-08T01:44:00.007+01:00

Someone wise once said that life is not only stranger than you imagine, it is stranger than you can imagine.

My friend George Machun, trapped in the deadening toils of academe at San Francisco State University, recently put up some photographs of stupid things done by idiots. One of them was a picture of a gas stove on which some fool had put an electric kettle.

Well, I actually did that in his house in San Francisco and nearly burnt the place down. George and I worked together for years in Hong Kong, Portugal, California and various places in South America. He is a splendid chap, but has to be corrected occasionally

For instance, he recently put up this quotation: A member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease." "That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."

I had to point out to him that it was actually John Wilkes who made the remark, and he didn't say "an unspeakable disease" - he said "the pox". By Disraeli's time they had mistresses but didn't talk about them.

I think it was to Lord Sandwich - a famous lecher - that Wilkes addressed the remark.

Wilkes was famously ugly, with a squint, famously funny and famously successful with women. When someone asked him how he did it, he replied, "It takes me ten minutes to talk away my face."

God's holy trousers! Your brilliant wit can cause real problems. I think it cost me a client

2011-09-05T14:03:00.011+01:00

The other day John Walsh let fly a blast of condemnation in The Independent about the latest Diesel campaign, which he headed A dose of something unlovely.

Here's what he said:

Do you ever see an advertisement that really turns your head? I recently did, and not in a good way. I nearly crashed the motor while driving past a bus-stop hoarding that featured the new fragrance from Diesel.

It showed a tempestuous-looking naked woman clutching to herself a giant, heart-shaped bottle of pink perfume. It was called Loverdose.

Who in the name of God's holy trousers thought that a good name for a perfume? What marketing department brainstorm produced that misbegotten collection of syllables? But wait, here are the product notes: "Loverdose ... represents a woman who is sexy, playful and irresistible. She receives an overdose of love from those around her, but she wants more. She desires pleasure, adrenaline and passion."

Oh I get it, it's an overdose of love, do you see? Although, when you see the word, you don't pronounce it "Loaver-dose" do you? You'd say "Love-a-dose" as in the phrase, "Would you love a dose of the clap?" The marketing people go on to tell us that the Loverdose bottle "represents a beautiful but deadly weapon of seduction". I think I'll pass, thanks.

Now John is not a stupid man, but it has clearly escaped his attention that Diesel advertising, which has been running for a good ten years, takes the piss out of the kind of ludicrous claims many ads make.

All this was lost on him. He is not a likely Diesel customer.

It reminded me of one of my own many stupid mistakes. Years ago I went to see the boss of a new firm called Telephone Warehouse. I was met at reception by a man whose face I couldn't quite place.

Then I realised it was Ernest Saunders, former marketing head of Guinness, and a notorious name in his day. He was advising the new company. He introduced himself, adding, "I've been reading your book. Very interesting."

I was flattered; but I've never been able to handle compliments and often pass them off with a joke. So I replied, "Why, can't you sleep?"

This shaft of wit was lost on Mr. Saunders, and I suspect I blew my chances with that firm there and then.

By the way, here's the Diesel TV spot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UyWfun8HY0&NR=1

News from the department of “Who Would have Guessed It?"

2011-08-30T20:35:00.008+01:00

I’ve almost giving up reading most of the papers.

That’s because so much is devoted to things you don’t need to know or know all too depressingly well.

This morning, for example, there was a feature on which female “stars” fancy a bit of lesbian hoo-ha - and every day lately there's something pointing out that if we stick around trying to sort out Libya we’re going to piss away billions and achieve nothing.

Most of the space gives us non-news - for instance a “shocking new report" that “at least 30,000 British men are digging themselves an early grave” because of obesity, alcohol and drugs.

The piece was headed “British men die ’far too early’”. Maybe we should ask their wives; but any fool with eyes to see would know what's wrong by wandering down almost any British High Street late in any evening.

We paid for this utterly useless report, by the way - it was commissioned by the European Community. But the best part of the piece came from Alan White, the country’s "first Professor of Men’s Health", who says "men are not taking care of themselves".

For this you need a professor? There is some sort of plot afoot to set up the most ludicrous object of study, given to the poser most able to point out things that are blindingly obvious to even the completest moron.

A close competitor to Mr/Professor White, however, must surely be “positive weather solutions forecaster Jonathan Powell”.

It is the coldest summer since 1998 - unless you live in the area between London, Bristol and Manchester, three places where I spend much of my time. In that case it’s the coldest since 1993.

This priceless information, announced today, came as a complete surprise to those who haven’t ventured outdoors since April. “Summer has been somewhat pitiful,” revealed Mr. Powell.

Not much bloody use is he? If that’s a positive weather solution, what’s negative? Icebergs floating down the high street?

And since we're on the subject of not much bloody use, let us turn to Mr. Cameron.

“That man speaks out of both sides of his mouth at once. Both sides lies” said Truman of Nixon.

He should have seen Cameron.

Having promised to get rid of those money-gobbling Quangos he’s done nothing of the sort. There’s a new one - the Workplace Retirement Income Commission (WRIC) - to review how well people are saving for retirement. As we all know the answer is "very poorly". And even if they had, the last government stole half of it.

Guess what the WRIC has concluded? "A permanent, independent pensions commission should be established to take the politics out of pensions". Well, well. One Quango begets another. They breed like bunnies.

I also see the time-serving buggers who run them have been busy lining their pockets, nigh-on doubling their pay. Is there no end to this shit?