World’s best seminar invitation: The Power of Assertive Commmunication – for women

Turning aside from the depressing Annual Report and Accounts of Kiddy-Fiddlers-For-Jesus (Rome) Inc., let us get back to business.


As regular readers may have noticed, one of my chief pleasures in this wonderful digital age is to take note of the sundry invitations I get sent, often to free seminars about networking or not-to-be-missed opportunities to get rich in the next 3 days, garnished with free DVDs worth $10:75 that other gullible sods paid $47,323 for not too many months ago.

A surprising number of these seem to come from Texas, by the way, home of G. W. Bush, the great statesman, practitioner of random capital punishment and the “let’s start another war and make my friends rich” approach to managing world affairs.

Why is that? Is misrepresentation a Texan speciality? It’s only a couple of weeks since I ran a seminar on a fundraising letter from a rogue who lives in Detroit, but sends his begging letters from an address in Texas

But I digress.

One seminar firm in particular provides me with a regular flow of chortles, as they seem to specialise in selling stuff to dithering executives in dysfunctional, ill-run organisations whose staff are (what a surprise!) demotivated.

They pump out a seemingly endless flow of advice whereby managers can either stop their staff giving them a hard time or, after they have failed, fire them without having to pay too much compensation.

However, the prize for invitation of the decade has to go to the subject line of one I got today: LAST CHANCE ! Women’s Leadership Series: Power of Assertive Communication – 4/8 Audio Conference.

I’ve been battered, bullied, hit over the head with a tape recorder, screamed at incessantly, subjected to day-long torrents of tears, had to walk to hospital with a bleeding artery and stabbed – twice. All women. How about the Power of Polite Invitation?

I thought it fitting that this arrived on the day that, allegedly, Christ rose from the dead, because one of the attempts at communication I mentioned left me literally within in an inch of my life and I only failed to bleed to death from another because I lived near St. George’s Hospital.

If it happened today I would be dead, because that hospital is now an absurdly overpriced hotel. Not an improvement.

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.

4 Comments

  1. cliffoa

    Hell hath no fury like.

  2. lurafrazey

    Drayton, two things:

    1. You weren't referring to me in any of those personal anecdotes were you? Cause I know I've done a few of those things but haven't always kept track of to whom …

    2. As a woman who was recently (and not for the first time) accused of being a member of the “feeble” sex. Yes, FEEBLE. I'm compelled to express my appreciation for your acknowledgement that women are quite capable of communicating in a variety of ways, including assertively. Now if we could just get certain men to stop attributing this phenomenon to our “hormonal instability” fewer gents might end up in the emergency room. Not saying you, Drayton, are guilty of this practice, just pointing out it's an all-too-regular occurence leading to extremes of verbal and physical violence.

    Feeble my ass.

  3. I wonder what exactly they mean by assertive communication? And why on earth would there need to be a seminar “for women” about it? Rather sexist I think.

    (Okay… is THAT assertive enough?)

    Tell me, will there be a man or woman teaching this seminar? (Just wondering.) I think I would rather learn kick boxing. I already have a big enough mouth. Now I need something to back it up.

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