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

I have been amused lately by the torrent of messages from crooks promising to make anyone a best-selling author in two shakes of a dog’s tale.
I have not found it that easy. 

One of my books, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, has been selling steadily around the world since 1982, but it wasn’t easy to write.
I spent a month trying to get going and failed completely. Then I had another go a year later and it took 6 weeks frantic typing followed by a couple of months of editing.
Revising it repeatedly has been a nightmare because it is fairly easy to write something long, then cut it, but very hard to write something short and expand it.
But I had no choice. In 1980 the computer was only used by clever people at places like The Readers Digest; the word database was rarely heard. And as for the Internet – what was that? Text marketing? There were no 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 is Ryan Healy.
I just read this in his blog: “Creativity thrives under limits, be they natural or imposed.” It reminded 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 ad agencies.
David Ogilvy rang me up, which was vastly flattering. They had great clients and I thought we’d get business that way. They were nice people, which is as important as money. But a huge factor was their work, at that time the best in the world.
The guiding spirit was their worldwide creative director, Norman Berry, who had once offered me a job when he was creative director of Young & Rubicam. He said something I have never forgotten: “Give me 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.




About the Author

In 2003, the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.

He has worked in 55 countries with many of the world’s greatest brands. These include American Express, Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Columbia Business School, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen.

Drayton has helped sell everything from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig. His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, out in 17 languages, has been the UK’s best seller on the subject every year since 1982. He has also run his own businesses in the U.K., Portugal and Malaysia.

He was a main board member of the Ogilvy Group, a founding member of the Superbrands Organisation, one of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing and one of the first three people named to the Hall of Fame of the Direct Marketing Association of India. He has also been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida.

1 Comment

  1. Kevin

    You are quietly, elegantly, and hysterically funny.

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