Don’t have your copy written by a speak-your-weight-machine

My old friend Glenmore sent me something interesting today, as he often does, about a campaign aimed at “40-plus” women.

After making sure this referred to age not measurements – you never know, do you? – I went to see more.

I read a message from the excellent Patti Boulaye saying that “a wonderful woman Caryn Franklyn is trying to fight the battle of ageism in the fashion and media industry and has convinced Debenhams to lead the way”

It is many years since Debenhams led the way in anything, and certainly no battle. So being translated I suppose this means they scent the possibility of making a few quid.

But they are pushing at an open door. M & S started using Twiggy years ago with much the same thinking in mind.

And what a shame Debenhams ruined it so comprehensively with copy opening in the following crass way:

“As a department store we pride ourselves on offering a great range of clothing for all ages. That’s why we’ve launched an incredible new project called The Style List, in partnership with fashion expert Caryn Franklin.”

Is that really the way your customers speak, Debenhams? Is it really “incredible”? “Utterly predictable” would be more like it.

The other week I heard that agencies have found a new way of extracting money from clients by helping them with their “brand conversations” – jargon, I guess, for how to speak to their customers.

On the evidence of this, there is a big market out there. Now I think of it, we did some work for one of Sir Philip Green’s store chains a while back to help them in this.

I advise these folk to bear in mind the motto of perhaps the greatest retailer of the 20th century, Julius Rosenwald of Sears, who said “My ambition is to stand on both sides of the counter at once”.

And I recall that Feargal Quinn who built up Ireland’s best supermarket chain by attending to customer service used to spend much of his time in the stores watching customers.

You won’t learn much sitting in meetings talking rubbish about social media, believe me. Watch the customers. Talk to the customers. They are the only profit centre. They will tell you.

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. Drayton, the problem here is subtle.

    I post on a lot of forums and answer marketing questions. Most of the questioners only want the answers that they like. They want a name for their business and have said as much. They haven’t told you anything about what it does or who its for – and they take any questions along this line as “abuse” (according to the moderator who pushes pens for $10/hr).

    You try getting the idea of customers across to guys like these and you’ll quickly hit a very solid wall. Try penetrating it – as I did – and you’ll get some angry responses (either that, or they run to mummy in tears).

    It’s all ended up in a tight circle where copywriters give CEOs exactly what they want. The copywriter doesn’t know any better either. What’s more they’ve got a living to make, haven’t they?

    1. Drayton

      You got that right.

      A copywriter actually wrote to me last week asking my advice on some slogans he had been asked to write.

      I replied saying his client didn’t need any slogans, and the ones he had in mind didn’t work anyhow. Spend your time thinking how to begin the damned ad, because that’s the big challenege, not how to end it.

      But then he said that was what they’d asked for. So I replied saying, give the idiots what they want.

  2. Oh, and when you meet such people, they’re really boring to deal with too. You spend all your time finding out what they want and how they want it done. There’s no laughter, no come-backs, nothing.

    Nobody learns anything. It’s deadly.

    1. Drayton

      Alas, we live in a world of drivel, and generally the bigger the firm the greater the drivel. I sometimes wonder whether they recruit people with ads reading something like:

      Headline: Are you a crashing bore?

      Copy: Do you use long words because you think they impress people? Do you speak in cliches, love jargon and spend most of your time attending pointless meetings? Do people avoid you at parties? Do you think marketing is all about fatuous slogans? Did you last have sex ten years ago? You sound like our kind of person. Reply immediately if your ambition is to to become the Chief Something Utterly Pretentious Officer

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