It is 1.28 a.m. on the morning of my birthday, and I have a very early plane to catch to Milan. “What the hell am I doing still awake?” you may wonder. The answer may not make sense, but it …
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Drivel of the week
When I wrote a column in Marketing magazine some years ago, I read something that struck me forcibly. It suggested that if you make your stuff controversial enough, your readers will write your column for you by agreeing, complaining or …
Read More“The new Peugeot 207 – the drive of your life”
Do you ever wonder, as I do, why copywriters come out with such utter tripe? It would do them good if they were forced to sit with their customers and see how their stuff is greeted, night after night, by …
Read MoreI’m writing this in the clammy heat of Brooklyn, where my eldest son lives. I come here often to see him and my youngest daughter who lives in New Jersey. (Don’t panic – despite their astounding good looks I am …
Read More“Procrastination and delay are the parents of failure” – Canning
That seemed a good opening to the story I promised about the stabbing, the suede coat and the stripper, but never delivered because I forgot to save it on my computer. (I might add that silly mistakes made on computers …
Read MoreD’oh! idea of the week
“The others to some meaning make pretence;But Shadwell never deviatesinto sense” – Dryden This week, crouching heading and shoulders below all other contenders … epic in its stupidity, witless irrelevance and incomprehensibility … a textbook example of corporate idiocy and …
Read MoreMea culpa! Mea culpa!
For those of you never cursed with having to learn Latin, that means “It’s my fault”. So … it’s my fault you never got the story about the stripper and me being stabbed. It’s my fault that I wrote most …
Read MoreSordid details and politically correct comments postponed …but in the meantime some marketing (yawn) …
I realise you may be straining at the leash to hear about the stripper, immigration and so on, but here’s something that may be of practical interest. I wrote an article on subscriptions marketing a little while ago that my …
Read MoreThis week’s load of old codswallop
I got out of the tube at Oxford Circus the other day to be greeted by a pretty young thing who handed me a bag. Here it is. Fittingly it was made from bio-degradable plastic, as it was one of …
Read More“There is nothing so bad that politicians cannot make it worse” – Mark Twain
Before I begin, a disclaimer: I belong to no party – though I’ve worked for two – and will talk about that eventually. Do you know when the licensing laws came in – and why? Lloyd George’s government introduced them …
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