The new black market: don’t get caught holding the sardines

After the second world war, when I was already middle aged, ha! there was a joke going round about a crate of sardines.

One of the boys on the black market liberated them off the back of a lorry, and sold them on to a pal, who sold them on to his pal, and so on. Eventually one guy opened a can to see what they wee like.

They were rancid, foul, inedible. He rang his friend to complain. “Have you tasted these bleeding sardines? They’re foul, disgusting. What a liberty!”

He was greeted with roars of laughter. “What are you playing at? Are you insane? They’re for buying and selling, not eating, you schmuck.”

And that, friends, is a brief parable that explains why the world’s economy is now in shit.

It is also highly relevant to the way so many people are persuaded to buy miracle courses on how to sell when they have nothing to sell, and nobody to sell to.

I was talking to Ken McCarthy about this a couple of weeks ago over lunch. He does give advice on what to sell before his system seminars, and I now recall that I give a long list early in my book Commonsense Direct and Interactive Marketing.

That book is a constant puzzle, mingled blessing and curse to me. Year after year it keeps going, which is good, but year after year I have to keep revising it. Aaargh.

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