Why Learn The Hard Way?

Do you realise you are one of a very small, distinguished, lazy minority?

Did that sound a bit paradoxical - or as if I was buttering you up - or both?

It was both - and I'll tell you why, with some helpful suggestions.

A few naturally suspicious souls (marketing does that to you, doesn't it?) have asked if I really just sit down and write these helpful ideas just off the cuff.

Some think I wrote them all before I began. Well, I actually wrote two, and kept going. Now I have 23 more ideas already lined up for you, but not written.

Would you like to know where they come from? Only one source - and anyone can tap it just as easily as I do.

Let me explain what I mean.

I am editing this in the kitchen of a pleasant house in Montclair, New Jersey. I often come here to see my 11-year old daughter Chantal.

(Don't panic: I'm not going to be a doting parent and show you the photographs, but I will tell you a relevant story.)

Last year Chantal sang with her choir in Carnegie Hall, New York, about which there is a very old joke.

A man asks a New Yorker, "Can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?"

The New Yorker replied, "Study!"

Well, the difference between the winners and losers in marketing is mostly just that. Study.

And the only reason I can give you these ideas is the same reason you're reading them. I study - I'm not that talented. I have a library of thousands of examples - good and bad - and I add to them constantly.

Are you intelligently lazy?

Because you're reading this, I know you study too - which is why I put you in that small, distinguished minority.

But you may have wondered why I put you in a lazy minority.

Well, when I started in advertising I was amazed to see that most people relied on flair, luck, good looks, intuition, what they liked - anything except a study of what worked and what didn't.

"What glorious good luck," I said to myself. "I've found a business where people are too stupid to study. How can I fail?"

But what's even more amazing is that today, decades later, nothing has changed. It's probably even worse!

I must have asked thousands of people at conferences and seminars what marketing books they've read - and the overwhelming majority have read few or even none.

I'm just staggered.

Not because they're lazy. Most of them are diligently beavering away. And often on things that are a waste of time.

And they spend far too much time on the urgent, rather than the important; on the latest fashionable fad, as a substitute for grounded knowledge.

The truth is that you and I are the real lazy ones - which is the paradox I mentioned.

Isn't it sheer madness to spend arduous years learning as you go along - like these amateurs do? You can easily pick up what you need in a few weekends from people who've invested lifetimes and billions learning what you need to know?

That is being smart, professional and intelligently lazy.

And it's why my helpful hint is the reading list contained in the box. I'm sure you've read some of those books, but not all.

Recommended Reading List E-mail Marketing Made Easy, Malcolm Auld Secrets of Successful Direct Mail, Richard V Benson Commonsense Direct Marketing, Drayton Bird How to Write a Sales Letter that sells! Drayton Bird Tested Advertising Methods, John Caples Eicoff on Broadcast Direct Marketing, Al Eicoff Scientific Advertising, Claude Hopkins Profitable Direct Marketing, Jim Kobs Ogilvy on Advertising, David Ogilvy Maxi Marketing, Stan Rapp and Tom Collins The Great Brain Robbery, Murray Raphel How to Advertise, Ken Roman and Jane Maas Writing that Works, Ken Roman and Joel Raphelson How to write a good advertisement, Victor Schwab Successful Direct Marketing Methods, Bob Stone The Solid Gold Mailbox, Walter Weintz The End of Marketing as We Know It, Sergio Zyman

One of those books - Scientific Advertising - I've already offered free in this series. (Note from Rezbi: Stick your name and email into the box at top right and I'll whizz it over to you in a few minutes).

But you might like to know that David Ogilvy told me over dinner one night in a castle near Frankfurt that "Everything I know I learned from John Caples."

Best,
Drayton

P.S.  This is number 20 of Drayton Bird’s 101 free helpful marketing ideas.  You can sign up on the link below for the rest.

—————————————–

Website: www.draytonbird.com / www.eadim.com

Click here to get 101 free helpful marketing ideas. Marketers from all over the world think they’re a pot of gold.

The Drayton Bird Blog – please do not visit if you are easily offended.