How to send out a catalogue and make people read it
This piece was written as an illustration of how one can move away from the standard approach to a covering letter to a catalogue, to something quite different. The point being that no one reads the standard stuff anymore, but they will read this…
I’ve suffered now its your turn
Every year my three daughters give me a birthday present. And a bit later a Christmas present. Nothing unusual in that, you may think, but my daughters have views on what their Dad should be able to do and the form of education that he now needs.
One of the things they reckon I ought to be able to sort out is electro-mechanical gubbins like how to put my text messages in both upper and lower case, and how to install overseas channels on the digital satellite system.
These are of course extras to the basic function of a Dad these days, (which incorporate removing footprints from the inside the car windscreen, and keeping the battery topped up with distilled water. In vain do I suggest that my daughters ought to be able to control their passengers (“but he was being sick Dad!”) and sort out their own battery (“the guy in the garage said this type of battery never needs topping up,”) so I always lose.
Anyway, because (more by chance than anything else) I somehow know just about enough to keep a car on the road, they torment me in the more recent areas of technological advancement.
So to keep me up to speed with such issues they give me a present – a present that invariably needs programming, installing, opening, closing, adjusting, setting, reformatting, focusing, and generally sorting out. If I tell you that last year they gave me a digital camera, and I took three films of my nose before I realised I was holding it the wrong way round, then you’ll appreciate the problems I have.
This year I thought it would be fun to see if other people suffer from the same sort of problem. So enclosed with today’s catalogue you will find a little package. Your first task is to open it.
When you have done that you will notice that you have been given a clock, but the timing on the clock is wrong. So I want you to change the time. If you can do it all by yourself, then you win the Hamilton House Techno Brilliance Prize of the Year. Fundamentally the prize is worthless but you have won it.
If you fail, then you win the equally worthless Techno Failure Prize of the Year. And you can share that with me.
But I want to assure you that I know the frustration that all this can bring. So in the PS I have put the answer. No cheating though, or I will be very upset.
Happy reading of the catalogue. Please keep buying from us.
Yours
Tony Attwood
PS: Press Time, Press London, Press Set.
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