Big is not better. It is usually just bloody stupid

I worked on Phillips advertising twice. Once I wrote a TV ad that shifted a boatload of car radios they hadn’t been able to sell. I wish I had a copy – but I left all examples of my advertising genius on the top deck of a bus 35 years ago.

One thing I noticed about Phillips – as with most large firms – was that they didn’t have a clue about advertising. They still don’t. Another was that they kept in getting bigger and bigger – but their profits didn’t.

I just saw an ad in The Wall Street Journal with the wanky heading “Because there’s no place like home, especially when you’re sick”.

See if you can tease a benefit or reason to keep reading out of that little lot.

The baseline was written by a Jane Austen fan, I guess. It read “PHILLIPS sense and sensibility”.

The copy ran:

“Hospitals are excellent establishments. It’s just than no-one likes going into them unless they have to. So why not have the hospital come to the patient instead? Getting healthcare at home is a simple solution that makes patients less anxious and hospitals less crowded. Find out more at www.phillips.com/because”.

And that’s all, folks. All the benefits carefully buried in the copy and no justification for them. Idiots.

There are idiots amok at Verizon, too. But they are not human.

When I got here I wanted to use my US cellphone. It had $6:78 credit. But it didn’t work. “You have insufficient credit” said the Dalek machine. No human being to talk to. Just press this and press that.

It turns out the thieving bastards steal all your money if you don’t add some at regular intervals. May they rot in hell.

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.

2 Comments

  1. Please tell me you've written a book somewhere that includes the following chapter:
    “how to sell advertising that works to people who don't understand advertising that works”.

  2. Shannon O'Hara

    Dear Drayton,
    I wondered the other day about what your blog lacked in 'craft' – pace other remarks of mine.
    Then someone sent me Dave Trott's latest. Now, I have had an interesting exchange with him, previously, about what a 'brief' should look like. He was very engaging and interesting on the subject.
    But to return to 'craft': his blog on Steve Jobs, after the hagiography and fuss has passed, is remarkable.
    http://davetrott.campaignlive.co.uk/2012/02/28/fear-is-your-best-frriend/http://davetrott.campaignlive.co.uk/2012/02/28/fear-is-your-best-frriend/It reads a little like a 'prose poem'. He crafts, as my partner pointed out to me, so that it can be read on a small screen (portrait or landscape).You might want to think about this.Kind RegardsShannon O'Hara

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