Back in December 1985, I ran (or tried not to interfere in other people running) Britain’s biggest direct marketing agency. We were being courted by many of the big groups – I think we had conversations with eight of the …
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Does this compute to you? Or, can you count? No? Thought not.
Do you think an advertising spend of $1 million that gets $1.28 million in retail sales is a great investment? Think about it before you answer. In AdAge’s online mag, with breathless excitement, it was suggested on this basis that …
Read MoreBarack Obama visits a Glasgow hospital
I fear this will only be appreciated by those of Caledonian extraction with a sense of humour – i.e., everyone except the Great Flatulent Toad. Barack enters a ward of patients with no obvious sign of injury or illness, He …
Read MoreA stroke of genius at Marketing Week! They get rid of the only thing worth reading
For over ten years, at varying intervals, I wrote a column for Marketing magazine. Such are the vagaries of human memory that some people still think I do – even though I haven’t for nearly ten years. Eventually I wrote …
Read MoreA timely reminder for the resident rogues
The gentleman on the left is Oliver Cromwell, whose speech on the Dissolution of the Long Parliament given to the House of Commons on 20th April 1653 was sent to me by my friend Ian Dewar. Cromwell was an utter …
Read MoreVandals unmasked – and criminals protected by idiots
This is Robert Davis, the living, breathing cultural disaster who heads the committee that thinks a blank grey oblong looks better than a work of art worth quite a lot of money. Besides the fact that he should have his …
Read MoreA touching tale for the young at heart
A fireman is polishing his fire engine outside the fire station when he notices a little girl next door in a little red cart with little ladders hung on the side and a garden hose tightly coiled in the middle. …
Read MoreIt’s vanished! Did the council Gestapo remove it?
Almost exactly a year ago, to my huge delight, this Banksy mural appeared on the wall next to the Post Office depot at the end of Newman Street, where my office is. Banksy’s stuff sells for as much as £250,000, …
Read MoreNow am I surprised he’s a crook, too? No. But should we just put up with it?
When the Nazi leaders at the end of the war were tried, the prosecutors bent some of the rules. Nobody lost too much sleep over that. They were criminals, everyone could see, just as Pol Pot and his followers were, …
Read MoreMeasured reaction to economic crisis
I see that Ministers are not being panicked by the economic crisis, because for them there isn’t one. Porqui “My old man’s a wanker” Smith billed taxpayers £40 for a barbecue in her second home – no doubt on the …
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