George Bernard Shaw was funny - but not always right - and news about the Great Mystery Branding Event

Over 40 years ago my first book was published.

I sent it to Bill Melton, one of my old teachers at Trent College, with thanks for his help in shaping me.

Modestly he quoted George Bernard Shaw: "Those who can do; those who cannot teach."

I replied that Shaw forgot about those like him who were bloody good teachers.

The other day I got a kind message from a man who helps people pass exams and went to look at his website.

I wrote in my bossy way saying he should not just say what he does, but how he helps people, and I asked why he didn't use testimonials

He replied more or less saying he thought that was a bit too pushy and commercial.

From the abyss created by my years of folly I wrote this:

Don't be so bloody English and "I don't want to sell, it's so vulgar"

So here is advice from the echoing Gorge of Senility.

Ask yourself why people come to you.

What reward do they get? What misery do they escape?

They get the reward of success and escape the misery of failure.

They pass that dreaded exam. They get the job because they're qualified.

They get real, practical benefits - but these have great emotional meaning.

They succeed where they might have failed.

Your work is quite possibly the difference between happiness and despair.

And they will only believe you can do this if they see you have done this for other people.

If you wish to help people succeed (and if not why bother to live?) then you should do everything in your power to do so. You must sell.

If you don't sell what you can contribute, you are limiting your ability to do so - and the good you can do.

In the end you don't feel as though you have done what you could have done with your life.

That's a shame.

***

On another subject, I plan to run the branding event I mentioned a while back over a weekend in conjunction with De Montfort University.

This will not be one of those hot air fests where big shots from well-known brands stand up and bray about their successes, with dreary presentations put together by their agencies ... then you wonder what exactly you have to do.

It will feature James Hammond, who has written one of the best books about this in the Sunday Times series, Rory Sutherland, President of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, who talks entertainingly about it. Also Andy Knowles, who has more intelligent things to say about design and how it affects sales than anyone I have ever heard.

The highly entertaining Ian Mulingani of Brandscape will reveal some startling facts about how experiential marketing can have an extraordinary impact on attitudes to brands and, more to the point, sales. He has done some remarkable stuff with people like Mercedes.

There are some others I am talking to, all of the same calibre - and bringing up the rearguard, me.

All things are subject to change, but it will be a 2 day event, the first day speakers giving you insights into how you build a brand and the second a workshop, where you go into exactly how you build YOUR brand, following a unique 4 stage process developed by James - a modest man whose work deserves to be better known.

It won't be cheap, but it won't be extortionate.

I'll keep you informed.

Watch this space, then

“Don’t tell my mother I’m in advertising – she thinks I play the piano in a brothel"

I think that title, from Jacques Seguela, is the most entertaining of any book about advertising, closely followed by Jerry Della Femina’s “From those wonderful folks who gave you Pearl Harbor”.

But when I inveigled my way into the ad business, hardly anybody was interested in being a copywriter, because hardly nobody knew what a copywriter was and nobody cared. Indeed, one of my late friend the very talented Bill Jayme’s many good jokes was, “Have you ever been able satisfactorily to explain to your mother exactly what you do for a living?”

But I am stunned and shocked by how many people today either are copywriters or want to start on this self-destructive path, paved as it is with unspeakable horrors like Compliance Departments, Art Directors who think 50 words is long and clients who think any fool can write a letter - and proceed to give a live demonstration .

All that preamble leads me to an email I got two days ago from Johnny Cullen who said he was compiling a report called “What makes top copywriters tick (and why)?”

He excluded the obvious answer, which is "other writers". That made it a challenging question. Here is my reply – far less entertaining than the two titles above, but you may find it interesting. Since I was as usual too damn busy I dashed it straight off and was surprised to see it made sense.

I am inspired by:

Desperation --- the knowledge that I HAVE to come up with something.

Fear --- that this time I will fail (and I sometimes do).

Fascination --- with new things and people. Every time I learn something new or meet someone interesting it makes me happy and starts me thinking.

Example --- whenever I see someone who does something well, even if don't have any skill in that area, it goads me on to do better. Years ago I saw a masterclass by Casals. I can't play any instrument, but that cheered me up no end.

Oddities --- I rejoice in them. Never stop looking out for them. They lead to interesting ideas, I suspect.

A sense of inferiority --- I think what I do has little merit, but at least I can try and do it well.

Fury --- it maddens me to see how many people settle for second or even third best. Why bother to live if you feel that way?

Since I wrote that list, three other things came to mind. I find going for a walk gives me ideas, as does the demon drink and its nasty aftermath, the hangover. I do not recommend the latter two courses; the evidence is in the picture on this page.

Johnny Cullen has a very good website indeed - www.eustondoyoucopy.com. He is a real student of advertising and you can reach him at johnnycullen2005@gmail.com.

“It’s the same the whole world over – ain’t it all a bleeding shame"

This wonderful old song line came to mind when I read a story in Malaysia’s Advertising and Marketing magazine about a pitch for the Tourism Malaysia account.

The mag – which is excellent, by the way – comments that “Half the town is pitching for the account, and there has been a lot of frustration with Tourism Malaysia holding their cards too close to their chest.”

The incumbent agency was pissed about so much that they resigned the business and the story is running and running.

If I know anything about Malaysia – and I do as I have spent a lot of time there – the chances of this being a straightforward process are negligible. The politics will be unbearable and in Malaysia it very often really is a question of who you know.

But memory transported me back 40 odd years to my first big job in the mid ‘60s - as Copy Chief, then Creative Director of the London agency for the British Travel Association. Satisfying them was a nightmare as there was always a battle between the various regions about who got the most mentions.

This was hardly helped by the fact that we had to present to a committee. The chairman was Lord Manfield, a distinguished former Cabinet Minister whose knowledge of and interest in advertising was, I imagine, sketchy at best.

We also had the Greek National Tourist office account. In their case at least I knew I could never be accused of knowingly telling lies as I wrote the ads without ever having visited the place. Anyhow, the chief problem with them was not advertising. It was getting them to pay.

They had a marvellous line I wish I had written, “Greece greets you warmly” – one of those rare slogans which encapsulates the right message. Of course, they stopped using it. Fools.

As Bill Bernbach observed, one average campaign run for ten years is better than ten brilliant campaigns, one a year. But that was a brilliant line. The trouble with most clients - actually, most people - is that they mistake change for improvement.

Antediluvian antics at Barclays Bank. Stumbling across a good idea they make their staff’s jobs impossible. What else is new?

How can one single out a particular bank in for incompetence, rapacity and all round folly? It is hard; but I have always had a soft spot for Barclays.

They had a series of loopy marketing directors, all of whom as far as I can see went on to other good jobs after being found out, as is the way in the potty world such people inhabit.

One thought it a good idea to run commercials featuring the actor Samuel L. Jackson wandering around aimlessly talking to a pig, perhaps in the bizarre belief that an American actor, at that time famed for violent roles, was a convincing authority on the realities of British domestic finance.

Another started plastering the banks with matey slogans on the grounds, I imagine, that for instance calling an ATM a Hole in the Wall would endear the bank to customers. The signs and accompanying paraphernalia for this little conceit must have cost millions - with further millions to remove.

But somebody at Barclays had a good idea recently. They started sticking electronic kiosks in the branches where you can do all your transactions without having to queue at a counter.

My beloved, a born masochist - she puts up with me - banks with Barclays. She made a payment through one of these kiosks in London before we moved to Bristol then went to check her account at the kiosk in a branch here. It could tell her nothing.

Puzzled, she went to the counter to enquire. The girl pulled her details up on a screen to see what was going on, first checking name and address.

This proved challenging.

“Your address is 51, Ables Road?” No, it wasn’t. The poor girl couldn’t read the address that was there before her eyes on the screen. And even if she could it wouldn’t have helped, because believe it or not, the system doesn’t allow the people in the branches to get full details of what happens via the kiosk. Only head office can do that.

However, the girl at the counter did have a tag that gave her first name – let’s call her Dolly – under which was written “loves cats”. This was clearly a residue of the attempt to render the bank and its staff loveable.

It is hard to see how knowing which animals Dolly likes is any help when all you want is that she can read, write, handle transactions and tell you what you need to know. I don’t want to love the people in my bank. They can be infatuated with giant Peruvian rats for all I care. All I want is they be polite. Years ago, when they had some authority, being friends with them was a help. But now that everything they do is controlled by the dimwits at the centre, it’s of no use whatsoever.

Since Dolly who loves cats was unable to oblige we went to a bigger branch to discover that here too the kiosk would reveal nothing. The evidence suggests it may have been upset at being asked: it crashed.

It then transpired that even the lady managing the branch couldn’t find out the necessary details. So forty years and more after banks started having databases Barclays’ masterminds still haven’t grasped that you need a central one everyone relevant can look at - let alone that the people who really need access are the poor souls who deal with customers.

How bloody sad is that? My heart goes out to the manageress and all the underpaid people in banks who suffer from the ill-thought-out “strategies” of the head office boobies. If like Dolly who loves cats I had to work in a branch I fear I too would lose the ability to read.

Peter Drucker said years ago that there is only one profit centre in business: your customer. But that profit is only made possible by your staff. Why make their lives so difficult? Why not give them some control? Oceans of research show that people who feel in control do a better job.

But then the only thing that appears to interest those who run banks is their grotesquely swollen pay packets. In less forgiving times or more excitable societies they would have been strung up for incompetence. Only professional sportsmen and pop stars are so insanely overpaid. But at least they entertain us.

Neither Spick Nor Span - Just rather sloppy like my spelling, but more infuriating

I'm sorry, but this is all going to be rather tedious, so let's start with one of my favourites:

"We can always bear with equanimity the misfortunes of our friends" - De la Rochefoucauld.

Since it takes weeks to get internet broadband here in my new home town - really an old home town as I shall explain - I'm in a charity cafe (what a good idea) typing this.

Things did not improve after the failure to get our couch into the flat. Being nitwits we had no idea how to turn on the heat, so the weekend was spent at around zero degrees. But the misery was exacerbated by the negligence of a firm called Spic n Span - if that's how they spell their name.

The previous occupants of our flat had cleaned up afterwards, but She Who Rules This Cranky Old Bird's Roost wanted it immaculate. A really deep clean, costing 60% more per hour than the cleaning done in London was arranged. So when we arrived, exhausted, it was dispiriting to find traces of dirt here, there and everywhere.

The lady supervisor was summoned, expressed dismay, and said it would be fixed. But it wasn't. We (that is She Who Rules etc.) spent two hours cleaning shelves, tops of cupboards etc. while I watched and took incriminating photos - sample left above.

This time the Supervisor sang a different tune. "Anyone could have taken those pictures," she said. And indeed anyone who had nothing better to do could. To which was added, "You didn't allow enough time for the job."

Since she was the one who said 16 hours would be enough ...

Well, this is getting to be a bore.

But I was amazed that cleaners in London could do a better job for £10 an hour than they did in Bristol for £16.

I like Bristol, though. The reason I feel at home is that a fair bit of it is named after my mother's family - Colston. But they have a really odd bus service, which seems to involve a mandatory tour of the city wherever you're going.

Oh, and I see I misspelt embarrassing in my last piece. Oh dear.

Anyhow, here's something else for you from De la Rochefoucauld: "Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example".

I can really relate to that.