Posted by:
Drayton Bird
January 13, 2009
Issue #588
Recessions are not new to me. I was born in the middle of the biggest one in the 20th century.
And through boundless folly, I’ve managed to create a few of my very own over the years.
But the one which brings back the fondest memories was in the seventies, when the deeply unpleasant Heath and the cheerily incompetent Callaghan (two useless prime ministers, for those of you who don’t follow ancient British history) did a great job of screwing up the country.
Actually, that’s unfair. The unions did.
Under Heath we had a three-day working week. Yes, we were only allowed to work three days out of seven: There wasn’t enough power for the other days. Under Callaghan, bodies were left unburied - really - and garbage uncollected. So you see, living in “Merrie England” has its own special problems.
And before all the scary headlines have you hiding under your bed, you might like to know that at that time the stock market dived by 90%. I read that the other week in a piece by Lord Young, who lost his shirt then, but has done rather well since.
What led to success
In those dear, dead days two partners and I started a direct marketing agency. In under four years we were the biggest in Britain (not very big really – it was a fairly small industry then).
This was partly because my partners were – and are – very talented, and partly because we promoted ourselves in every possible way. (Have you noticed how most agencies don’t really believe in marketing; they just suggest it to their clients?)
But mostly it was because hardly anybody else had a clue about direct marketing, and, even more importantly, we were too damn busy to think about the economy.
So my first piece of advice is this: The only economy that matters is your economy.
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Posted by:
Drayton Bird
June 5, 2008
Issue #433
(Plus a prediction about the future
of online marketing)
Almost exactly 21 years ago, I was invited to go to India to help train O & M’s newly hatched direct marketing agency.
The idea was suggested by David Ogilvy, who loved India, and who told me before I went to get to know Mani Ayer, the head of the agency.
“He is the most able man in our network,” said David.
And so I did meet Mani, and we’ve been friends ever since.
At that time, O & M in India had a different structure and name than the rest of the group around the world. A substantial percentage was owned by the employees, and the firm was called Ogilvy, Benson and Mather – OBM – which Mani told me stood for “Other Buggers’ Money.”
(Mani is, like most of the people I like, very funny.)
A couple of years later, I went to conduct a direct marketing seminar in Goa, where Mani was also speaking, so I watched him in action.
He opened his talk by saying, “Gentlemen” - it was an all-male gathering – “Kindly remember that the obvious is always overlooked.”
I have never forgotten that, and it occurred to me when preparing some talks in Australia recently. I hope you find some of what I said interesting – but then again, you may not, so you can stop reading at any time.
It seems to me that some obvious things traditional direct marketers and even marketers generally have known about for well over a century are largely, if not entirely, ignored by people selling online.
This is a shame, because online selling is just accelerated direct marketing – a phrase I coined, by coincidence, during a TV interview in New Delhi.
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Posted by:
Drayton Bird
March 21, 2008
Issue #379
I’ve got good news and bad news …
First, the bad news. Julie McManus couldn’t be with us today. We think she’s off chasing down the Easter bunny, but that hasn’t been confirmed.
Now for the good news: Drayton Bird – yes, the Direct Marketing Legend that David Ogilvy claimed "knows more about direct marketing than anyone else alive" – agreed to fill in for her.
Drayton has just returned to England from a conference/victory lap for his fans in Australia. From all accounts, the trip was a triumph.
While in Australia, he was interviewed by Malcolm Auld, the author of Direct Marketing Made Easy and Australia’s leading direct marketer.
The interview will appear in Australia’s Direct magazine, but Drayton wanted you to see it first. So let’s get to it.
– Wendy Makepeace
We’ve been hearing a lot about the death
of traditional media from digital zealots,
what is your response to this prediction?
Rather like Mark Twain’s on reading his obituary in a newspaper: “Reports of my death are exaggerated.”
I’ve been hearing about the imminent death of direct mail and other traditional media for well over a decade. The first person to tell me, at 3 am in a bar, was the English creative director of an agency in Kuala Lumpur.
Like most things said by drunks in bars it was utter rubbish. Now they say ‘Web 2.0 will change everything’. These claims are based on a totally flawed premise: that new media replace old. They generally complement each other, which is why integrating media pays.
How come people are reading more books than ever? Still watching TV, going to movies, listening to live music? Why are direct mail volumes, with a few hiccups, still climbing? And why have e-mail response levels fallen from those early, dizzy heights?”
Marketers should learn more from history. As the American philosopher George Santayana said: ‘Those who ignore the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them.’ And we’re already seeing people make the same old mistakes with the Internet.
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Posted by:
Drayton Bird
February 14, 2008
Issue #354
In the 70’s, I was so broke I lived under an assumed name to avoid the tax man.
I made a living by writing anything for anyone. Speeches, articles, presentations, ads, film scripts – they paid, I wrote.
What was my secret? I was quick.
One publisher used to give me a bundle of notes one day, and I would send back two or three finished chapters – on anything he wanted - in less than a week.
So I wrote part of The Marlboro Book of Cowboys. And three chapters on the famous Bugatti automobile (though I couldn’t even drive). Part of a guidebook to London. And a section of a book called The CIA and the World Weather Conspiracy.
I learned then that for most of the planet’s history, the world has been much colder than it is now.
And I learned something else. People are really gullible. They will believe just about anything, Not just the good things – How you can make thousands writing copy within 3 months – or you pay nothing (really?) … but also the scary things. In fact, they like being scared.
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Posted by:
Drayton Bird
December 20, 2007
Issue #312
A few years ago a marketing magazine asked me to write about “ambient marketing”. This used to come under the heading of stunts.
About 100 years ago Claude Hopkins had the idea of baking the world’s largest cake and putting it in a store window to promote Cote-o-Suet. If only he’d known he was doing ambient marketing.
Another magazine asked me to write about “confusion marketing”. This used to be called weaseling, a form of adroit misrepresentation. A good example is “Nothing acts faster than Anacin” – which makes you think Anacin acts faster than anything else.
It sometimes feels to me that every day someone with an eye for a fast buck renames something as old as the hills, and hoodwinks at vast profit another big fat segment of the people who’ve never bothered to study what makes messages sell.
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