Have You Heard of Drayton Bird?

Here's what David Ogilvy said of Drayton and his seminal book on marketing “Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing”...

Drayton Bird knows more about Direct Marketing than anyone in the world. His book about it is pure gold.

Eric Van Vooren of BBDO Direct in Brussels said...

Without doubt the best marketing book which exists.

And probably my favourite quote about Drayton's book come's from Robert Leiderman, the leading telemarketing expert, when he said...

Perceptive, provocative and funny as hell.

You get an idea of the type of personality Drayton Bird is when he begins his blog with...

Welcome to Bird droppings

Okay, so who is Drayton Bird?

The Chartered Institute of Marketing named him “one of 50 individuals who’ve shaped today’s marketing”.

As you’ve already read above, David Ogilvy said he “knows more about direct marketing than anyone in the world.”

Side note...

If you don’t know who David Ogilvy is, this is what his biography says of him… he’s the guy who…

“Founded the agency which would become Ogilvy & Mather. Starting with no clients and a staff of two, he built his company into one of the eight largest advertising networks in the world. Today it has 359 offices in 100 countries”.

And, while David died in 1999, he...

remains one of the most famous names in advertising and one of the handful of thinkers (Raymond Rubicam, Leo Burnett, William Bernbach, and Ted Bates) who shaped the business after the 1920s.

Drayton has written three business related books including, “Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing”, “Salesletters that sell” & “Marketing Insights and Outrages”.

He has even written a novel entitled, in his own inimitable way, “Some rats run faster” which he wrote at the age of 27 when, I’m sure he would probably agree, was when dinosaurs still roamed the earth.

Drayton say of this book, “Hardly anyone read this brilliant work as it had virtually no plot”, which isn’t surprising as business and marketing are where his strengths lie.

He's written over 1,000 columns for international magazines, spoken in 42 countries and worked with many leading brands, incl. Amex, BA, Deutsche Post, Ford, Microsoft, Nestle, P&G, Philips, The Royal Mail, Unilever and Visa. In 1977, he and two partners set up Trenear-Harvey, Bird & Watson, sold in l984 to O&M.

As international Vice-Chairman and Creative Director, he helped O&M Direct become the world's largest DM agency network, and was elected to the worldwide Ogilvy Group board.

He now runs Drayton Bird Associates and has interests in 5 other firms. He says the ones he never visits do much better, but I kinda doubt that.

I studied Drayton Bird’s work when I studied business in the mid-1990s and it seems surreal when you get to meet and work with someone with Drayton’s reputation, someone's work you studied.

In marketing terms it’s like being on first name terms with the biggest movie and rock stars.

Except for the fact Drayton actually knows how to think for himself.

You can get his book “Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing” – now on its 5th edition here http://directanddigitalmarketing.com/ along with his other books. That's a direct link.

Take it from me, or you can find out for yourself, Drayton had me chuckling from the second paragraph.

This is not your average crusty text book... it's almost like reading a novel.

Ken McCarthy, of The System Seminar and probably the leading exponent of utilising the internet for business had this to say of “Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing”...

What makes direct marketing such an appealingly reliable way of making money in good times and bad is that it's not based on theory, opinion, fad or fantasy.

Instead it's rooted in unchanging principles of human behavior.

If you're new to direct marketing, you won't find a better guide to this reality-based approach to selling than Drayton Bird.

If you're an "old hand," this is a book you'll want to keep handy as an entertaining and insightful reminder of marketing principles you know you can always count on.”

If you've been in business, or at least studied it for any length of time, you'll have heard of Peter Drucker.

Peter Drucker is generally recognised as the guru's guru when it comes to management.

Well, as far as I'm concerned...

Drayton Bird is the Peter Drucker of Marketing.

Or should that be... Peter Drucker is the Drayton Bird of management?

Here's that link again, go check out the comments on Amazon http://directanddigitalmarketing.com/