An apology – and a comment

I usually write these things late at night, at insane hours in the early morning or in spare moments – and keep making silly mistakes as a result: yesterday I wrote “worst” instead of worse.

Apologies! I should be ashamed of myself.

But I thought you might be amused by a comment by my Aussie partner:

Further to your “lingerie is the new black”, just saw some proprietary research for a charity that says “good is the new black”. They gotta be kidding.

I might add that apart from being stupid they are wrong in implying that charity is all of a sudden in favour. Most charities are finding it harder than ever to raise money.

As usual researchers have it all wrong, because they a) actually believe what people say and b) actually believe that people know what they are going to do.

The best quote on this: “If I’d asked the customers they would have said they wanted a faster horse” – Henry Ford

My best recent example is an ad I wrote for the Prudential which research revealed the customers would never read. They much preferred another ad done by an agency called Tequila. My ad outpulled it by ten to one.

A footnote to this: you might think that after beating that agency in every one of series of tests we would have got the business. Of course not. Big businesses don’t work that way. They prefer neat arrangements to more profit.

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.

2 Comments

  1. Anonymous

    I’m worried about those “late at night mistakes” – you might forget the condom !

    The origins of which are interesting – according to Chambers Dictionary…”perhaps the name of the 18th century inventor”. What a great time he must have had product testing and measuring, eh Drayton?

  2. To quote the US comedian Tina Fey’s comment on the Clinton/Obama race… “Bitch is the new black.”

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