There’s so much talk about digital these days, you might think traditional (paper) direct mail just crawled away into a corner and died. But, like radio after TV came along, paper DM is still here. If my letterbox and workload are anything to go by, there’s still plenty of DM landing on Britain’s doormats. I […]
If you haven’t worked directly with a copywriter before, or would like a better experience the next time you do, you should find the following advice helpful. I just turned down a job. I hated having to do it. My prospective client, an entrepreneur launching a start-up, was a nice enough chap. But his business […]
Over the past few decades, I’ve noticed a lot of the products, services and offers I write about have become have become increasingly complicated. Take, for example, the average smartphone. If you’re looking to buy one, you need to consider all sorts of things, like speed, screen size, camera and which network tariff to get. […]
Do you spend too much time trying to get new customers, when you could use it more effectively winning it from existing ones? Some years ago I was freelancing at a big, famous agency. I noticed they never seemed to pitch and I thought perhaps they’d lost their edge and were failing to get on […]
No one should write, produce or have to receive junk mail. It wastes marketing budgets, not to mention precious natural resources. And it annoys vast numbers of recipients who aren’t interested in what’s on offer. The following is an account of an experience I had. I hope it will help you prevent your direct mail […]
According to Mashable, Groupon are preparing for an initial public offering that would value the deal-of-the-day website at $15–$20 billion. It was only last December when Google tried to buy Groupon for $6 billion. So how did this company, just over two years old, become so successful so fast? Well I don’t know. If I […]
Nine brilliant campaigns/ideas from 2010 that I wish I’d done Below is a collection of some of my favourite ads and marketing ideas, done by others, from the past 12 months. I’d have liked to include some long copy and a piece of offline DM, but I couldn’t recall any examples that had really wowed […]
Can you imagine what it must have been like working for Joseph Stalin? One foot wrong and you’d be heading off for porridge in Siberia. Or worse. So you can sympathise with Alexei Shchusev, a famous Russian architect who Stalin hired to design the original hotel Moskva. The communist leader wanted the hotel to be […]
