Where did I go wrong? Where did they go right?.

About 24 hours ago I got an email from Sydney, with these two pictures.

The writer was the spiv in the white suit, my old partner, Glenmore Trenear-Harvey. The other two old geezers are a pair of ornaments of the Direct Marketing scene in Oz – Ian Kennedy and Eddy Boas.

They were all reminiscing about people they and I knew well.

As Glenmore put it, “From Bill Jayme to Sam Josefowitz, mammoths of direct marketing were de-iced and re-examined by three old codgers as they slurped delicious Australian ‘champagne’ at the Odyssey Wine Bar, at the Rocks, in Sydney last evening.

Eddy Boas, Ian Kennedy and me had a nostalgia rush as we chortled our way through the pantheons of international direct marketers we’ve been privileged to have known.

What titans; what rogues and scallywags; visionaries, snake-oil salesmen; comedians, kind, generous people, dumbasses and long-time friends.

You were part of it and would have added more anecdotes to savour.”

And what was I doing when I received the email? Revising some copy.

Some mistake, surely.

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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