New Year Buffoonery


While the rest of you were no doubt making pious New Year resolutions, I was out doing what I do best: making a fool of myself.

(In case you’re wondering, the picture being so blurred, I’m the one on the left. The one on the right, with the heavy beard, is not really my new best friend. It was a fancy dress party.)

Talking about fools, the recession has not quenched their enthusiasm in the wacky world of marketing.

A few months ago some halfwits in a meeting (probably devoted to brand values) decided it would be a really neat idea to take a venerable insurance firm that’s been around for 211 years and change its name to something that sounds like a dodgy Swiss health tonic.

And so the country is plastered with hoardings and the television channels replete with commercials telling us that Norwich Union is about to become Aviva, as if anyone gives a shit. Nice one, boys. Are you friends with the idiots who decided to call the Royal Mail “Consignia”?

For that matter, does anyone (except the shareholders who subsidise this nonsense) give a shit about the ads that a bank called Santander is running saying “We are stronger. We are closer. We are Santander.” These ads feature Lewis Hamilton, the well-known boy racer and financial wizard. They are what David Ogilvy called “flatulent puffery”, and I call “kissing the chairman’s fat posterior in public”.

Talking of which, alas, I may never see the sequel I really recommend – “We are marooned so far up our own arse it will take an SAS search party to find us.” However, as Santander has been buying lame British banks like there’s no tomorrow, I have high hopes for a few announcements saying something like, “Er, we have financial indigestion and maybe we shouldn’t have bought that lot of deadbeat tossers.”

But enough of this badinage. Here is the 100% bad taste joke I promised before Christmas.

Vicar (checking into hotel): I hope the porn channel in my room is disabled.”

Receptionist: “No, it’s normal, you fucking pervert.”

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.

5 Comments

  1. Steve Gibson

    Drayton,

    The Aviva ad may be even more idiotic than you realise.

    I follow the economy quite closely, but with so many financial institutions failing and being taken over, I’m not 100% sure which ones have and haven’t failed.

    So, this Aviva ad made me think that N.U. went down the shitter and had to be rescued by some foreign company.

    And, now they were trying to spin it positively with some celeb filled nonsense about always wanting to change their name.

    So, their timing is excellent: take a company that’s not been in trouble and make it look like it had to be bailed out.

    Genius!

    Steve

    PS The Abbey ad should get a tagline:

    “Abbey Santander – for Britons who’d always wanted their money managed by Spaniards”

  2. Alex

    Some salesmen tried to flog me some crap web advertising proposition the other day saying a major bank had invested in it.

    I said i hope its not icesave!

  3. It wouldn't have been quite as bad had their recent ads not reminded me of someone else's…

    http://bravenewmalden.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/norwich-union-has-become-prudential/

  4. Fools following fools- up their own arses.

  5. Fools following fools- up their own arses.

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