A genital tale for copywriters

Shame about the anals – courtesy of The Blessed Andy Owen

We scribblers, like members of any other trade, exchange little stories, one of which I just received from Andy Owen.

It reads as follows:

I received an email from a good pal yesterday, to announce the launch of his new website…

He took his eye off the ball for a second – and sent it out with the following subject line:

“£200 disocunt to celebrate our new web site”

I emailed him immediately.  As you can imagine, he is in bits.  I feel so sorry for him, as he’s a lovely guy, very smart and extremely professional.

This is what he has said in his email to me this morning:

Verily, one does not have to be Tom Dooley to hang down one’s head.

 Or in other words, “Oh, bollocks!”

Still, I only sent it to 425 clients..

 Indeed, so ashamed am I that I’m thinking I might climb up on the roof and toss myself off.

Thanks for spotting it, though. Nobody else has mentioned it.

I suppose some might think it was a ploy to attract attention, but it was simply a catastrophic mistake on my part.

Perhaps it’ll go down in the anals of marketing history.

 

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.

4 Comments

  1. Alex Singleton

    Alas, typos are inevitable – including unfortunate ones.

    Most people are forgiving.

    Reply
    1. Lorne Evje

      Agree. Absolutely.

      Reply
  2. Lorne Evje

    Andy Owen says, “I suppose some might think it was a ploy to attract attention….” And, of course, it wasn’t.

    This, however, puts me in mind of those “experts” who encourage us to just keep pushing out that blizzard of marketing messages without being too precise in our use of the language [may I at least run the spell-checker…?], lest people think we’re being pretentious.

    Awful, awful, awful.

    Offal, offal, offal.

    Of course, in a business without standards and real accreditation, what can we expect…?

    Reply
  3. klXi

    631735 395783I discovered your weblog web site on google and check several of your early posts. Proceed to maintain up the superb operate. I just extra up your RSS feed to my MSN News Reader. In search of ahead to studying extra from you in a although!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *