Watch out! Menaces about – especially Olympic fascists. Plus a little about my folly

Well I put that up because a friend sent it and it amused me.

In marketing there are many equivalent follies – financially, if not physically as dangerous.

Take the poster at the bottom, put up by the Olympic Nazis – and if at all possible deface it..

It is on a road near the station here in Bristol. The traffic goes whizzing past – so nobody sees it anyhow: just another example of the way our money gets pissed away by The Great Clueless Who Run Things.

Please note the following.

Not content with having the ugliest Olympic logo ever at a cost of £400,000, Wolf, Olins, the famous Rip Off Design Specialists created an extraordinarily hideous typeface to go with it.

Then we see what I can only call an insult to athletes three cartoon half-wits standing on a car who clearly should have their heads jammed down the nearest toilet asap.

They are there to remind us that the roads to the Olympics will be usurped by assorted creeps, free-loaders, politicians and bribe-takers preventing ordinary people (who will pay for this farce) from using them.

Why any sane person would want to remind us all of this is a mystery; but then so are many of the decisions these people make.

I shall keep well away from London and the TV throughout something that has as much to do with the Olympic spirit as a pool of puke. I would certainly encourage anyone who could arrange for massive blocks of ice the size of automobiles to fall from a great height on the entire unOlympic Freeloaders Committee

The only good thing is that the design is so bad that nobody will notice.

You, however, if you get my emails, will have noticed a positive avalanche about my Bristol copy day, which I must apologise for, as they are likely to continue.

The thing is that although the seats are filling up, thank God, I may have made a foolish mistake.

I’ll explain why in a day or two – but anyhow, you don’t have to read my guff unless you want to make more money. And you don’t have to book now unless you want to save £100.

I must apologise to those who have booked yet keep getting emails. De-duping is extraordinarily time-consuming. But I have made a series of short videos which you may find interesting anyhow.

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.

3 Comments

  1. Oh, Drayton. The Olympic powers that be put that poster there because they knew YOU'D see it and they knew YOU'D blog about it, thereby spreading the word nationwide for the cost of one piddling little poster in Bristol. They picked the font and the cartoon characters for the same reason – to raise your ire and get you to notify the world.
    Either that, or they're stupid. (More likely to be the second one, perhaps?)

  2. Dear Drayton,
    The
    date for this year’s Chap Olympiad, which will take place over two days instead
    of one, has now been confirmed as Saturday 7th-Sunday 8th July 2012. Tickets
    will are available on http://www.ticketweb.co.uk
    . This year’s Olympiad is competing with a
    rival organisation, calling itself simply “The Olympics”, which is attempting to
    steal the limelight with a very unimaginative, corporate version of the
    Olympiad
    in Stratford, no doubt with some opening ceremony conducted by a Pearly Queen – and we all know who that is.
    The 8th Chap Olympiad features the usual smorgasbord of
    unathletic events, designed to highlight the competitors’ strong points –
    well-pressed trousers, superb pipe-smoking technique, impeccably waxed
    moustaches – and draw a veil over their weaker points – being useless at sport,
    disliking sudden movement, making an effort or perspiration.
    Immaculately
    dressed athletes will have their gentlemanly and ladylike skills put to the test
    in ten gruelling unsporting disciplines, including Ironing Board Surfing, Butler
    Baiting, Swooning, Not Playing Tennis, Umbrella Jousting and Shouting at
    Foreigners.Application is being made to some johnny by the name of Seb Cove, for an Olympiad lane which would be restricted to drivers of such marques as Alvis, Bristol, Frazer Nash and cads in Jaguars.
     

  3. Ingrid

    I like the way that Ice Fall sign is in capital letters, making it really easy to read at high speed.  You'd probably get crushed  by one of said automobiles before you got past the WARNING!

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