The Toppled Bollard: radical direct marketing in practice

This piece was written in 2005, and reused an earlier Toppled Bollard theme, but with a few twists.  Interestingly it worked as well as the original. Tony —————- At social gatherings it is common to find that the way your fellow guests treat you will always follow how you respond to the question: “and what [...]

                  How to survive social gatherings At social gatherings it is common to find that the way your fellow guests treat you will always follow how you respond to the question: “and what do you do for a living?”    Depending on your answer you will either end [...]

It is customary at this time of year to send a word of thank you to customers and friends as we approach the Day of the Celebration of the Small Kitchen Utensils. This day is a unique festival, and although not recgnised by many in our land, it is still a time for thinking of [...]

This web site records some of the humorous sales letters written by Hamilton House, using the theme of the Toppled Bollard – a mythical pub in Northants. Sometimes, as the Toppled Bollard stories continued, we wandered away from the Bollard itself and just wrote silly stories.  This is one that got a lot of interest, [...]

Toppled Bollard stories still do get written – here’s one that was created in May 2011.  Hope you like it.   Gibberish in the Community   I was delighted to be invited to be guest of honour at the annual Gibberish in the Community Awards at the Toppled Bollard last weekend. And what a night [...]

Looking back, some of the very early Bollard stories from nearly 10 years ago, were little more than simple jokes dressed up as stories.  And yet they seemed to get the chuckle and the response.  Here’s one from 2003.  The booklet mentioned in the PS is long gone, but you can see our latest info [...]

This sales letter dates from the early days of the Bollard, and represents an attempt to go everywhere and anywhere in one letter without actually saying anything at all.   It got a number of positive responses, but overall the result was a disappointment.  The general feeling was stick with one insane topic, rather that rage [...]

Some Toppled Bollard stories from the early series in 2002/3 seemed to take on a life of their own and visit territory unconnected with any other little tales.  This disconnection seemed to have no negative impact on the popularity of the series however, and I even received a few calls asking for “another one of [...]

You may well recall that following a difference of opinion with Customs and Excise, Corby’s local expert on direct mail, Billy “The Dog” McGraw, has been invited to spend some time working with those less fortunate than himself. Billy has indeed asked me to reassure his friends that the environment in which he spends his [...]

This past week I tried something of an experiment, sending one of the very early Bollard letters as an email to a range of companies with whom we have had no contact in the past.  Quite amazingly, ten years on, the letter worked in an identical way to the original. By which I mean, I [...]