Random thoughts of an idle fellow

I was walking briskly to the railway station this morning, as you do, and started thinking about the absolute essentials of communication, as you do.

And why?
Because I must have tried (with very mixed success) to write just about everything, and I have decided that pretty much the same principles apply no matter what the medium or what the purpose.
My first book was a disaster. It cannot have sold more than 4 or 5,000 copies, nor deserved to. Yet I understand you can buy a “collector’s copy” on the internet for £82, which seems to me sheer folly.
The reason it failed was simple: however well-written it may have been, no reader really wanted to know what happened next, which was just as well, because hardly anything did. They must have felt cheated, persevering as they muttered to themselves, “I’ve paid for the damn thing. Surely something will happen now.” Then flinging it on the floor in justified disgust.”
The plain fact is that unless you can gain attention in some striking way, with an explosion, a striking series of chords, a joke, a bizarre outfit, something controversial, you cannot gain people’s attention.
But if doing that is hard, the next part is harder still unless you make sure that it follows your opening logically.

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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