Posted by:
Drayton Bird
January 5, 2010
Issue #835
A one-track approach kills profits.
You’re getting far less value for the money
than if you use media together.
It is exactly 25 years since I was halfway through the nerve-wracking business of selling my direct marketing agency to Ogilvy & Mather.
They were perhaps the first advertising group to realize the importance of our discipline. That is because David Ogilvy had a concept he called “orchestration.”
With his flair for the telling phrase he talked of “many instruments, one big noise.” So they were busy building a complete armory of marketing weapons – PR, advertising, research, direct marketing.
Personally I never was wedded to a particular discipline. Early in my career I had worked in all those areas, plus telephone and face-to-face selling, at both of which I was spectacularly bad.
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Posted by:
Drayton Bird
December 8, 2009
Issue #815
Do you ever wonder if you are doing a “good” job? I mean, besides making a living, are you doing the right thing?
I ask you because a while ago I had to speak to Syracuse University students here in London doing a course called “Ethical Advertising.”
Maybe you and I are usually too busy trying to make a living to worry about that, but I found something rather good from Abraham Lincoln: “My religion is simple. When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad.”
So I was honest. I told the students a bit about what I’ve done. I didn’t feel as good about working for tobacco brands even if it was perfectly legal as I did about working for charities like Save the Children.
Then I told the students a true story – and a very sad one. But this story also has an important business lesson for you … it may even tell you if you are wasting your life, or doing something worthwhile.
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Posted by:
Drayton Bird
October 27, 2009
Issue #788
As far as I can see most visitors to this space are keen on improving their creative.
And why not? Simply by changing what you say or how you say it you can double, triple or quadruple your profit.
I have been writing copy for about 50 years now – and keep hoping that if I keep trying long enough I might begin to get it right more often.
So like you I’m always looking to see what I can learn from people.
The person I have learned most from in the past three years – this is not oily flattery, but the truth – is Clayton. I base this on research. The other day I reviewed all the files I have downloaded or copied in the last three years.
I discovered that I had 2½ times as many of Clayton’s ideas as anybody else’s.
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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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