What the greatest fraud in history can teach you about marketing

There is no more perceptive, wise or helpful commentator on marketing’s many lunacies than Denny Hatch.

Here is an extract from his latest.

I never really understood exclusivity until Bernie Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme put a spotlight on it. As Laurence Leamer wrote in The Huffington Post:

“It was an honor having him handle your fortune. He didn’t take just anybody. He turned down all kinds of people, and that made you want to give the man even more of your money. When he took your fortune, he told you that he would tell you nothing about how he achieved his returns. He was a god. He had the Midas touch.”

Web sites have been built on this exclusivity thing. Among them: Gilt.com, RueLaLa.com and HauteLook.com. They offer to “members only” the same upmarket designer merchandise sold by Saks, but at deeply discounted sale prices during specific time periods.

Saks is fighting back with an exclusive online “private event” that the CEO of HauteLook.com calls “the new way of retail.”

It ain’t new.

Saks is engaging in a technique as old as the hills. It’s called good, ol’-fashioned, time-tested, accountable direct marketing.

Go now and read the rest at http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/advertising-goes-high-tech-its-data-arithmetic-and-its-time-414303.html.

I’m afraid he quotes one of my most appalling jokes – but apart from that it’s all pure gold.

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. Anthony

    Amazing that a marketing guru at Saks was able to sell the board on this bleeding edge concept called “direct marketing.”
    Even more amazing is that other marketing gurus can convince otherwise respectable companies to advertise in restrooms. Yet there is the tax consultant, staring back from his poster above the toilet. Wonder if he actually gets business this way. What is the tracking metric?

    Reply
  2. M Jacob

    Now we need an expert per specific media engagement. 1000s are born every hour. The basics remain the same, always, so don't get taken in by technology, it's just media.
    Drayton, the link doesn't work, found it at another in the same site; decent stuff.

    Reply
  3. Drayton Bird

    Yes, M Jacob, I am bloody useless at putting links to videos on this damn blog, even though my partners have told me how to do it more than once. Trouble is, I started in business when clay tablets were all the rage.
    What does the M stand for?

    Reply
  4. M Jacob

    The 'M' stands for Mathew. I know it should be Matthew.

    Reply

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