A free marketing lesson – just a short walk away

I’ll explain why I wrote that heading in a moment, but it’s about why some businesses thrive and others flop.

First, let me ask: do you ever find yourself being infuriated by something stupid?

I do, all the time. It’s not just old age. I’ve always been like that. But it’s particularly aggravating when you’ve wasted your time and effort.

Two weekends ago I wrote some email copy for some people who wanted more responses.

Got the brief on Friday, delivered first thing Monday.

I did it as a favour to a client I like for way below my normal rate - and frankly my emails pretty much always get more responses.

The people in question had a meeting and decided it wasn’t right because it wasn’t in pretty html and they didn’t think it would work. I made a few snappish comments and told them I wouldn't charge them.

As the great Claude Hopkins observed 85 years ago, you won’t find the answer to your marketing problem in a meeting. You must conduct a test.

And as tests have revealed to the not-so-great Drayton Bird, sending what are really just leaflets through the ether is almost invariably beaten hollow by what looks like text – but is actually html so you can put in links and so on.

Few big businesses know this, because they waste countless hours in meetings talking tosh about strategy, missions, visions and other substitutes for thought.

You will learn little or nothing sitting in your office, but you can by going for a stroll, as I did yesterday.

In fifteen minutes I saw one business I bet will go broke and one that will make a fortune.

Would you like to know why?

In my area quite a few people have given up – especially bars and restaurants. Pubs are closing by the thousand all over Britain. I find it very sad. I was brought up in a pub – and I’ve had businesses go broke. I know how awful it is.

These pubs include one of the oldest in Bristol – been around for over 200 years. 30 yards up the road from them is another pub, with a big sign outside saying “Be your own boss – come and run this pub”.

That is coded language for: “We’re not making any money here – why don’t you try, sucker?”

Only a cock-eyed optimist would open a pub now, right?

Well, some folks have taken over the pub that went broke and refurbished it beautifully. But they have done precisely nothing to promote the place round here. No leaflets. No grand opening night. No special offer outside. Nothing. I only know about them because the pub’s next to a local supermarket.

I have a phrase for this folly. It is marketing by osmosis. Do they think people will come in because they put out thought-waves?

They chose a dodgy business to go into. They are at the less prosperous end of the street. They have a telling lesson 30 yards away. There are at least 5 pubs within 3 minutes’ walk of them. They offer meals: so does the best fish restaurant in Bristol, directly opposite them - with a very good lunch and early evening deal. So does the small but very good place one minute's walk from my flat.

I shall be sad to see them go.

10 minutes’ walk away from them a new butcher has opened.They are in a better location than the pub, next to a small shopping centre. They are owned by the restaurant next door, which does a very good trade - specialising in steak. So they must have great buying power.

There is no specialist butcher nearby.Only a big Sainsbury’s supermarket with a very ordinary meat department, poorly trained staff and an average to poor display.

Many people going to the shopping centre will go past the new butcher. They may be drawn there, because there was a barbecue stand outside. It was impossible to ignore. The smell was enticing. There was a queue. I tried a hamburger. Home-made. Excellent.

The shop front had its name in stylish type, Ruby & White (from the colour of well-hung beef, I guess). Inside everything was spotless and well-designed. The meat was well displayed. The people were friendly, trained and helpful. There were marinated cuts I shall certainly try. Interesting wines. Herbs. Good cheese.We spent £24 on beef and pork within 5 minutes. All unplanned. The carrier bag was smart enough to have come from a fashion store.

There are many, many lessons to be drawn from this contrast. If you want to know about marketing, get out a bit, take a walk, look around you. And if you want to pick my brains, and know a lot more than I covered here, come join me in October, here.

I will introduce you to some of the cleverest marketers in the world. They will reveal all they know. You will get a year’s free training and advice afterwards.

I only do this once a year.

The cost is below what you could end up paying surrounded by hundreds in a cavernous ballroom somewhere - then to be sold to when you came to learn.

We only have 40 attendees. It is in one of London's finest boutique hotels.

12 places have already gone (maybe 14: to be honest I'm not certain).

You won't be sold to by the speakers. There is an offer of free attendance at another seminar that covers one of the most important topics in business – featuring one of the world’s leading experts.

I'll tell you more about that shortly.

I only have room for 28 more people, maybe only 26.

Hurry.

Best,
Drayton
http://www.eadim.com/
http://www.draytonbirdcommonsense.com/

Startling glimpses of the ludicrous and incompetent

During the time of the South Sea Bubble, Britain's first great financial collapse, people would fall for anything. My favourite example which I recall from my school-days was a scheme to import jackasses from South America.

This was not necessary as all the jackasses needed were freely provided by the gullible. When Sir Isaac Newton was asked about it all the great scientist said he could not calculate the madness of people.

Nowadays nobody is taught history - one of the great criminal acts of recent governments - so I get the impression that as a result these speculative lunacies are repeated with greater frequency.

Thus it is only a decade or so since the last flood of dotcom follies, yet people are putting astronomical values on a thing like Groupon which has yet to make a penny, whilst the wily Mr. Murdoch lost S500 million on MySpace. At least he seems to have learned from it. He thinks Twitter is a bad investment.

On a smaller scale I am constantly amused by the dodgy schemes put out on the internet to beguile the gullible.

One that got a good laugh yesterday was "Guru Incubator Training" being offered by someone called J. P. Maroney, which rhymes rather fortuitously with Baloney. One has this vision of morons going into a vast hutch on a conveyor belt and coming with massive brains at the other end. Another I got a laugh from was an offer to "explode" my fan page from Robert Grant of Crowd Conversion. Is it dangerous? Will anyone be injured? Only in the region of the wallet in both cases.

More deserving of injury is whoever is on charge of what passes for marketing at Littlewood's, a big mail order catalogue. One of their dresses has been featured in Grazia, Britains top selling fashion'n'gossip magazine. Their sort of cheap tat rarely gets coverage like that. Was it given prominence on their web page as any competent person would have insisted? No way. You had to search for it. Clueless.

Best,

Drayton

www.eadim.com

www.draytonbirdcommonsense.com

Today's news: one remarkably stupid statement and one indefensible waste of public money

Pretty much everything that can be said has been said about what happened in Norway and poor Amy Whitehouse. Apart from the fact, in the latter case, that drugs should be legalised.

In Portugal hard drug use (alarmingly high when I had a business there) has gone down since they did so. But enough of that. Politicians always say this should happen - until they get intio power. I wonder why.

Let's move onto other curious aspects of crime and punishment.

Two convicts were caught whilst breaking back into prison after visiting their girlfriends and family.

The prosecutor said "One of the reasons they escaped was because they were fed up with being in prison."

Well, would you ever? I wonder that the others were. A crusade for world peace?

Which naturally brings to mind that fearless crusader whose tireless efforts in the Middle East have brought so much fruit. Yes, folks, it's The Bliar.

I see it cost just short of half a million pounds to provide protection for him when he came to

deny everything at the enquiry into how the Iraq got going.

This prompts two questions.

First, why would this saintly person need protection? Who would want to give him a right good kicking? Surely all the relatives of those people who died in Iraq would want to kiss his hand.

Second, since he is worth God knows how many millions, why shouldn't he pay for it himself. If, God forbid, I have to go into a nursing home in my declining years assuming they haven't all been closed down I will have to pay for it out of my savings.

But of course Ephraim McToad stole half those back in the late '90s.

Incidentally, did you know there is a Blair War Crimes Foundation which you can sign to petition the United Nations General Assembly and the UK Attorney General, to uphold the UN Charter, the Geneva and Hague Conventions, and International Law, and to indict Tony Blair for war crimes?

Best,

Drayton

www.eadim.com

www.draytonbirdcommonsense.com

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” - Karl Marx

Karl Marx was a much misunderstood man whose teachings have probably been responsible for more deaths than anyone in history, but that remark of his occurred to me when I spotted the front page of The Daily Star half an hour ago

For overseas readers I should explain that whereas readers of Murdoch's Sun move their lips when reading those who favour the Daily Star lick their lips when looking at the pictures. Like the Daily Express it is run by a successful pornographer. (And in case you're wondering, yes indeed: Desmond who owns the Express was entertained in Downing Street by The Bliar or Hoots McBroon - I can't recall which. Take my word for it, no Press Baron can be any lower than the self-righteous pricks at the top in politics.)

Anyhow, it came to pass that the big news in the Star today is that the professional trollop Jordan, aka Katie Price, claims her phone has been hacked into in order to find out details of her sex life.

This is the funniest thing since grandma caught her tits in the mangle and brought to mind Marx's observation. Ever since she had her tits (Katie's, not grandma's) stuffed with kapok or whatever they use to make them bigger Jordan has made a point of telling the whole world who is or is not fucking her and for that matter who else they might have been fucking.

What a splendid piece of work she is, to be sure!

By the way, I was chatting to a man from the BBC last night and we were wondering whether the man who got bashed by Wendy Murdoch was there by design to make us feel sorry for the old scamp.

What do you think?

Best,

Drayton

www.eadim.com

www.draytonbirdcommonsense.com

What did you do in the Great War, Daddy?

That question is one of the best examples of the shameless - even shameful - use of emotion I can recall.

It shamed many thousands to their deaths between 1914 and 1918 in one of the most pointless, bloody wars ever.

I doubt if whoever wrote it called themselves a copywriter, but it is a brilliant if macabre example of emotional blackmail.

It came to mind because a new client asked me a few days ago, “What can you do for us?”

I answered, “Practically anything” – remarkably vague, but true

One example is worth a ton of waffle. So here if you interested is a random selection of what we do and who we do it for. If you aren’t interested, don’t read another word. I don’t want to waste your time.

I’ve restricted it to examples of work we are doing now or have in the last three months, as otherwise you be even more confused than I am.

We help people all over the world. They vary enormously. Some are household names – the Pru, Nielsen Research and The Royal Mint, for instance. Others are much smaller . Actually some of our best, most satisfying work has been done for pretty small businesses. Less red tape and bullshit.

We help with marketing online or off. I write a good 90% of the copy and pretty much always rewrite the rest.

We help clients who sell to businesses and ones who sell to ordinary folks (“consumers” as they call them). We help sell stuff that costs hundreds of thousands and stuff that sells for under a fiver. We don’t care if you sell services or products.

We comment and advise on people’s marketing – recent examples include a firm in Hong Kong selling training and one in the U.K. selling office design.

I myself do a lot of in house and public seminars, sometimes with colleagues I respect. I also do video interviews about once a month - and people interview me, too. If you want to see an example of the latter, go to http://leadersin.com/gurus/drayton-bird

In the creative area we don’t just do copy. We do pictures too. For over thirty years my partner on the visual side has been Chris Jones, widely regarded as the best direct marketing art director in this country, and quite possibly the world.

We can help you with just about any kind of marketing for results. Brand-building, media buying, database, understanding customers, Search Engine Optimisation, lead acquisition and conversion online or off, direct mail, e-mail, letters, brochures, ads, commercials, videos, websites, landing pages, Adwords. You name it.

Here's a quick run-down of recent work (last three months):

• Corporate Pensions, using direct mail, email, ­­­­­­­­­­seminars etc.
• Language Courses sold on the internet
• Research on the internet - consumer and business
• Collectables sold via direct mail and on the internet
• Property sold all over the world, via the internet
• Insurance of several kinds
• Buildings, temporary and permanent
• Religious artefacts (Really. I'm writing about them this very day)

Those who get the best out of us tend to be doing well but would like to do better.

We cannot usually help people down to their last dollar, because there is usually a reason for that.

We cannot help people who are not totally open (in strict confidence) about their business, or people who will not do what we suggest.

We very rarely fail.

What we do not do: attend lots of meetings. I suffer from MSD: Meeting Surplus Disorder

Best,

Drayton

www.eadim.com

www.draytonbirdcommonsense.com