Here’s a cunning new/old business approach. Maybe copied from old fashioned greengrocers?

In olden days when I was young and dragons roamed the land they used to have shops called greengrocers.

They sold fruit and vegetables. There are still one or two lingering on. If you ever spot one, they are usually a whole lot cheaper than your friendly rapacious supermarket.

One trick greengrocers used to play (allegedly) was to misspell things on their windows, in the hope that someone would come in to correct them and end up buying something. Actually, I think they were just bad at spelling.

Nowadays I fear this would never work as almost everybody is bad at spelling.

A friend in the travel business just got an email he found sufficiently amusing to pass on.

It read:

My name is **** and I am the Head of SEO for DeepRed55, part of the Mitie Group.

We have worked on holiday sites such as *** and **** over the last couple of years for another agency gaining top five rankings for escorted tours, lake garda holidays, Famliy holidays and many others. We would relish the opportunity to work **** holidays with on your online campaign.

We could help you drive your online presence using our knowledge of the industry as where the team behind these major competitors. I would like to organise a meeting with someone to talk through the opportunities available and see how we could progress.

I think this is just a cunning wheeze to get free English lessons. What’s your theory?

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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