A guy called Richard Neill recently put up a Facebook post expressing surprise that his girlfriend’s periods were not the time of happiness, rainbows and power chords he’d come to expect from watching Bodyform adverts. Bodyform responded with this totally sincere apology: You might remember that I was wittering a few weeks ago about how there are two types of advertising – the advertising designed to sell, and the advertising...

I’ve talked about understanding your audience before… But seriously, this MATTERS. If you’re trying to sell something, it matters more than anything else. If you don’t understand who you’re selling to, then you can’t understand how to sell. If you can’t understand how to sell… well, let’s just say you should maybe put off that Caribbean holiday for another year. Every social group has...

Here’s a quote from the late, great, Jim Young, one of the old masters of direct marketing. He said the purpose of advertising was to do 5 things: To familiarise To remind To spread news To overcome inertia To add value not in the product You could rephrase these: To make people aware you exist To remind people you exist To give people a reason to care you exist To let people take advantage of your existence To tell people why your...

“Life’s too short to stuff a mushroom.” - Shirley Conran I have to disagree. And yes, there’s a business Aesop at the end of all this. But for now, mushrooms. Now, I am an enthusiastic if untalented chef. Eating good food is one of life’s great pleasures, and I like to create interesting meals. Last Friday, I tried recreating something I’d eaten in Cornwall, and it was pretty successful. Here’s how it...

I love this video. Ogilvy, of course, is an old master. The man is the Leonardo Da Vinci of direct response copy. That said… I do think there’s something he’s missing here. He’s right about a lot of stuff. Direct response is the advertising that makes the money, and it does that because it doesn’t care about pretty. It cares about dollars. Direct response is what makes your customers take action, right now. But...