Super-strength ad horseshit in an email from an Aussie recruitment business

I don’t know why it is, but ever since I first went to Australia 39 years ago I’ve noticed two things: you see some of the best advertising in the world there – and some of the most appallingly pretentious bilge.

Falling calamitously into the latter category is an email I just received from a recruitment business which was until now (I think) called The Recruitment Business or it could have been Creative People. I’m not sure because their devastatingly modern html email design had both phrases at the top.

It announced with sickening pretentiousness Our bold new rebrand (in sans serif lowercase, naturally.)

I narrowly failed to piss myself with excitement before forging on to read “It was something we needed to do” – a bit like having a wank, I guess – “we’ve got that little bigger than when we set out in 1997. And as a global company we needed a name and brand that reflects what we do best”

What they do best, quite clearly, is mince happily right up their own arseholes and talk total crap.

But I digress. You’re just dying to know their new name aren’t you? I won’t keep you in suspense a second longer. It is “become better connected” .

Well, you can’t fault that, can you? It’s suitably global and gets 10 marks out of ten for cliché with a gold star for concealing the nature of the business.

Recruitment people are the estate agents of business – but doing a far less necessary job.

They make far too much for doing far too little. They sit neatly between employees too idle, stupid and illiterate to find out where they want to work and write for jobs and employers too idle, stupid and illiterate to advertise intelligently for employees.

They are also, as you can see, as crammed full of shit as a boat loaded with would-be immigrants from Indonesia to the the land of Oz.

It is not always easy to find the right house, but there are precious few competent employees, very few firms worth working for, and all it takes is a little effort on either side to sort something acceptable out.

In fact among very best pieces of work I ever did were a letter I wrote to David Ogilvy to get a job and an ad I wrote to get new employees. Both worked exceptionally well, as did an email I wrote yesterday offering easy terms and a big discount off the price of next year’s EADIM.

If early results are any guide we’ll be sold out 6 months in advance. Maybe we should run it in Sydney:-) I haven’t been there for over two years.

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.

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