The funniest direct marketing speech ever – and James Hammond

I cannot say the words direct marketing often reduce me to paroxysms of mirth.
However, a speech I saw a few years ago did.
It was at a direct marketing awards event which I attended because someone else was paying.
To be honest the idea of giving awards for direct marketing always seemed to me a bit ludicrous – rather like giving prizes for sewage disposal. It’s just a job, and somebody has to do it.
But I was glad I went to this event, because the speaker expressed my views, but in wonderfully witty fashion.
He stood up and said, more or less “We all, no matter how humble, have ambitions in life … things we aspire to … things we dream may happen to us one day if we are very lucky… And my dream has always been to present the annual DMA awards for direct marketing.”
After that he really took the piss.

Stephen Fry was, of course, the man who made me laugh – and usually does whenever I see him. Anyhow, on Sunday night on BBC2 at 90 p .m. Mr. Fry is talking (of all things) about call centres – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015qqkl.


And for a fleeting instant my colleague James Hammond, he who wrote Branding Your Business – one of the very few sensible books about the subject – will be putting in his two cents’ worth, I think on the subject of accents. He’s the one on the left in the picture, and you can meet him if you come to EADIM.

I have mentioned that you ought to be there, haven’t I? If you are still playing with the idea, just email me, Drayton@Draytonbird.com and I will lay before your wondering eyes an assortment of suggestions.

Which reminds me, a man from India rang me up yesterday to tell me there was something wrong with my computer, which there isn’t.

I’m afraid I wasn’t very polite, though I do feel sorry for these poor people who are usually underpaid, given impossible targets and badly briefed with lousy scripts – besides being barely comprehensible.


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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