The Toppled Bollard: radical direct marketing in practice

An example of a Toppled Bollard sales piece.  It really doesn’t matter what you are selling with a letter like this.  As a one off, or as a first letter or email in a series, it won’t work, but as part of an ongoing communication campaign, it should give a laugh, and let people know [...]

Last week I took a lady from a well-known national charity out to lunch.  She was looking to undertake a mail shot to promote the charity’s commercial catalogue. There was also talk of a promotion to encourage people to go on a sponsored bungee jump as a way of raising additional funds.  I was looking [...]

How the fate of Louis XVI was nearly replicated by 134 Smarties This year the annual awards of the School Marketing Alliance for Reaching Teachers in Educational Settings (Smarties) took place in the Toppled Bollard in Corby – a jaunty venue and one that offers a thrilling setting for a meeting of the nation’s top [...]

You should be receiving a plate of Spotted Dick through the post As I began to feel the pull of retirement (it happens to us all, so stop sniggering please) I decided that each week I would make the effort to take one of the readers of my occasional meanderings s out for a meal.  [...]

This week, I went to lunch with a sales director who had a vision.  “We are a company that breaks the rules,” she told me.  “We don’t research markets – we create them.  Exceeding customer expectations comes in our stride.  When there’s a new campaign needed we clear the decks, and start afresh.   It never [...]

Why mentioning Bob Dylan is the best way to sell double glazing This week I was taken out for a most jolly lunch at the Snake and Wolfhound (a rather enticing local pub with a singularly varied menu that has opened just next to the Toppled Bollard) by a  journalist working on a series of [...]

One of the great things about direct marketing, according to our mentor Billy “The Dog” McGraw, Elvis impersonator and landlord of the Toppled Bollard is that it changes all the time.  For this reason, those people who just stick with old methodologies slip behind, while those who keep up with the pace are able to [...]

. Billy the Dog lashes out on the lack of understanding of the blog as a selling tool. At a recent lecture in the famous Toppled Bollard public house, Corby, Billy the Dog McGraw, keyholder to the saloon bar and head of the vodka division of the Russian Horticultural Association , bemoaned the fact that [...]

More from the lectures of Billy the Dog McGraw, at the Toppled Bollard, Corby One of my earliest experiences which taught me that common sense in direct marketing is bunkum came with a client about 25 years ago – long before the days of digital, before the days of the ball point pen, in fact [...]

Each week Billy “The Dog” McGraw delivers a lecture on direct marketing at the one of the pubs in the Toppled Bollard chain.  Here’s the text of part of his latest extrapolation…   Last week I was surprised to hear a ludicrous attack on our beloved direct mail industry by an ill-informed so-called “comedian” delivering [...]