The Toppled Bollard: radical direct marketing in practice

During the writing of the Toppled Bollard stories which appeared as direct mail shots I began to invent some characters who started to appear regularly within the pieces – most noticeably Billy “The Dog” McGraw, the landlord of the Toppled Bollard.   Over time he became not only a publican, but also an Elvis impersonator, and [...]

One of the big battles we have fought over the years is with companies that think it is a good idea to have a covering letter supposedly from the chairman, which starts, “I am delighted to enclose the new edition of ….” In my view it is a total waste of time and space.  Hence [...]

This web site is publishing some of the humorous sales letters written by the Hamilton House Mailings team during the past 10 years or so.   This particular piece had an interesting history in that a spoof web site we put up alongside the sales letter clearly caused some annoyance and we were asked to take [...]

This week at a business lunch at the Toppled Bollard a regular customer asked me if I had lost weight. I was course delighted.  I explained that yes indeed, since Corby had just gained its first health and fitness centre – the quaintly named “Sons of Mars & Daughters of Venus” – I had indeed [...]

A Toppled Bollard letter, using the traditional Bollard self-deprecation techniques to offer a free service.   These letters are just one of the techniques that Hamilton House has evolved over the years.  If you would like to talk about this, or other techniques, do give me a call on 01536 399 013.  No cost, no obligation.  [...]

“We tried direct mail – it was a total flop” was the first ever humorous letter I tried.  Unfortunately I have lost details of the date but it was sometime around 1990. The reason that the date has long since left me was that the letter was such a huge success we kept running 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 [...]

Last week I took a woman out to lunch. She represented a firm with a major education marketing budget and I was hopeful of persuading her to move a significant amount of marketing into direct mail and email.  Unfortunately despite changing venues from the local pub to the more illustrious Corby Hilton the meeting did [...]

In a speech at the Toppled Bollard in the public house’s famous landlord Billy the Dog McGuire was asked if he could say exactly what it was that the best advertisements contained. In reply he made his now-famous statement, “Practically everything and somethings twice.” Although this statement has since gone down into the legends of [...]