I want to be a pygmy instead of pretending to be a giant. Also, a little embarrassment – and your advice, please

After Cameron’s little squabble in Europe Mr. Clegg stamped his feet and said  “We risk being a pigmy on the world stage”.

What an EXCELLENT prospect. I love the idea of being a pigmy nation – like Switzerland or Norway. Sarkozy, being a genuine pigmy, naturally feels the other way round.

Mr. Clegg seems to have an almost unnatural desire to grab hold of the wrong end of the stick and beat everyone up with it.

Offhand the only sensible idea I can recall from this government is to restore tax breaks to people who marry. Clegg says it is a bad idea to “preserve the 1950’s marriage in aspic”.

 As anyone with eyes to see and brains to use knows, one of our biggest nightmares today is teenage delinquency. And as we all (save Mr. Clegg and a few PC crackpots) also know,oceans of research and statistics show that children whose parents stay together are, on average, happier, less at risk and do better in life than the reverse.

One of my own greatest regrets is that my first marriage broke up. God save us from posturing fools after short term advantage at our families’ expense.

***

This morning I woke up, as usual, absurdly early, to find a message from a client I am seeing on Monday for the first time. She wanted me to bring some samples of my copy for a meeting.

Oh God, I’m fearfully busy and it’s years since anyone asked that. I’ve been getting away with it on wild claims and all-round waffle. I had to send an assorted batch I could scrape together from current projects and bits and pieces.

Well that got the shattered old brain creaking, and I had an idea. Tell me what you think – usual address, Drayton@Draytonbird.com, or comment here.

I currently have four projects lined up, and each might benefit.

1. There’s the Spanish copy day at the end of April and beginning of March. We’re just negotiating on hotels, but it looks like Malaga . A U.S. attendee suggested that while we were there I might as well add a second day.

3. There’s Australia at the end of February.

3. There’s EADIM on October 4th (I think).

4. There’s also the relaunch of my Commonsense Marketing Series in January.

Well, I suddenly recalled that decades ago I used to do copy clinics where people aired their problems – usually one at a time, face to face – and I would give my views.

It was very popular. So I thought of doing the same thing within one, two or even all the things I just listed. I also thought of getting my partner Al involved. I always ask him to critique my stuff and he’s full of good sense besides knowing more about the magic of the worldwide interweb than me.

Tell me what you think, if you’re not too hung-over or busy wondering what the hell to give little Elspeth for Christmas (we did all our shopping yesterday, ha ha).

By the way, people haven’t all coughed up yet, but we now have over 30 of the EADIM seats spoken for. Less than 10 to go. I greatly fear there’ll be none left by New Year.

I had a most interesting “yes” from a Russian designer this morning. His site is full of highly original stuff. Not sure it sells well enough, though.

***

My dear friend Panda sent me this. I love it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGgKwggLaWw


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.

3 Comments

  1. Thomas

    At the risk of being labelled a PC Crackpot (surely this is impossible, as I not only subscribe to your blog, I derive great delight reading it), there is a cause and effect problem with the logic of good kids come from the oft repeated (yet to be proven) married couples that stay together Bliar-Camergoon tosh.  Maybe there is some other effect that keeps couples (do they have to be married) that also 'produces' decent kids, which would still be true if inverted? That is, the conditions that give rise to good kids are also responsible for producing more stable families. Just a thought, sadly not on the topic you requested 🙂

  2. Drayton

    I suspect you have a point there: a variation on “the appetite grows by what it feeds upon”

  3. Jay

    Dear World,I am writing to you today to make my staetment and fact clear. It’s certain that the country Mozambique needs more vaccinations. The US, England and most of Europe send money and aid to countries every year but we need you to help us out and to get these places more wealthy in order to give children a better life. If we keep donating millions of pounds to things like Comic Relief every year (47 million this year) where does it all go is my question! So I plead that you keep the world wealthy and stay wealthy.

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