What a nasty, suspicious, curmudgeonly, hypercritical old git I am

I don’t know what comes over me some of these mornings. Maybe it’s a light coating of imaginary volcanic ash.

Why do I doubt the promise of Rocketfish that they will “Launch (or blast) Drayton Bird Partnership website into first place!”?

Is it because they keep sending me the same message every bloody day, which bespeaks a certain lack of imagination – or a belief that boredom is the key to persuasion? Is it because names like Rocketfish summon up visions that make me puke?

Or maybe it’s because this sort of claim must work, so quite a few mugs out there must fondly dream that being in first place will solve all their problems, when of course many other things matter more.

Or is it just that since the Drayton Bird Partnership hasn’t traded for quite a few years they must be utterly useless and are wasting my time and their money? If they can’t get that right, why should I trust them to do something serious?

Then again, why do I have qualms about a Mr. Grant who keeps sending me messages about the joys of crowd conversion? Is it just that he keeps pestering me too often? Or it is because if he spells controversial as contraversial I wonder what else he isn’t good at?

The head of a big airline suggested some years ago that if the seat-back trays are dirty you have a lingering fear that the same approach is applied to servicing the engines. Hmmm.

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. warrencottis

    I think a lot of these SEO companies see the internet more as a mechanical process rather than an interaction of people and emotions, Mr Curmudgeonly

    I can't wait to be curmudgeonly… sounds so much fun

    Warren

  2. Joanna

    I think it has a lot to do with SEO and Social Media being the current big thing. People are just jumping on the bandwagon without really having much to offer.

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