Words and concepts that attract, explain, persuade, convince.
Literate, human, sometimes humorous, always serious.
As I originally typed them.
John New Creative. Leaflet/Home Page concept. JA/5.3.08.
People buy from people they like.
We live in a (supposedly) tough, material age, in which human values are meaningless.
All head, no heart.
But the most successful marketing professionals know better.
(Think Guinness. Richard Branson. Mac v Microsoft.)
As the obvious differences between competing products and services narrow,
the heart becomes ever more important.
We respond when real people offer us something useful, essential, or desirable.
Not just grabbing a sale. Winning our loyalty.
That's how good advertising works.
(Think Guinness. VW. Your personal favourite.)
It doesn't have be shot in the Caribbean, on a megabudget.
It does have to be:
Should be easy, shouldn't it?
The card counting blackjack tips and black jack odds are just words too, but they can make a big difference in making real online blackjack cash at online multiplayer blackjack games. SO learn blackjack today at AceHoyle.com!
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Dear................
Many top law firms now invest in business and personal coaching. Why?
The answer is quite simple. Coaching works.
It enables lawyers at all levels to focus on their careers.
It helps them to prioritise, to delegate, to get along better with colleagues – and to see the broader picture, as well as the details.
What's more, it promotes a gratifying work/life balance, which makes them even more effective.
To quote Guy Beringer, of Allen & Overy, in the Law Gazette of 19.10.06: “I can think of virtually no areas of activity where people cannot be improved by it – and many where their performance can be transformed.”
The case for coaching is unarguable. But how could I help your firm?
My name is Carole Davidson, of Carole Davidson Coaching.
My HR career has encompassed 400 Commercial Law solicitors at Norwich Union, and being Head of HR with Salisbury's No. 1 law firm.
One of my clients, a Senior Partner, says: “Carole has worked in the same environment as her clients. She immediately understands their challenges and gets straight to the point.”
My professional qualifications include a post graduate Diploma in HR Management, Fellowship of the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development and psychological skills.
I look forward to discussing the ways in which I could help you and your colleagues to make the most of your talent, energy and commitment.
I shall contact you in the next few days, to arrange an appointment.
Yours Sincerely,
Carole Davidson
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Alfa Mail© Final draft JA/12.5.09 ( from a series for the leading Alfa Romeo magazine.)
Alfa Mail: lettera numero tre.
Caro Mondo,
The Joy of Scrapyards.
Before they were shut down by some Health & Safety Committee – possibly called Ruth Kelly (collective noun, you understand, nothing personal) these could be a summer day's paradise.
Baking sun. Scorching metal. Scent of old oil and black mud. Whoosh of oxy-acetylene torches. And, subliminally, the fairground sweat: leather jackets, acrobatics on flaky pyramids. After that foolish dash to catch his plane, Eddy Cochran's last taxi would have wound up in a place just like this, the third step to heaven..
But despite the aura of blood and hair, most of the inmates were simply MOT victims.
You've got your blue cantilever toolbox. Spanners & sockets: BS, AF, MM and Untrustable. Screwdrivers, stillsons, hacksaw. Small hydraulic jack. At least one jemmy-like lever and a lump hammer. You remove the Joe Lucas dynamo, starter, or P700 headlight unit you came for.
Other things are more poignant.
At Crutchers, I vandalised that Riley 9 and lusted after equally worthy cars and bikes. A Rover 14 started on the button and ticked over the way it would have done in 1934. But this was 1964. So this was scrap.
At Dunstans Lane, two immaculate 2 ½ litre SS Jaguars met the torch. They'd probably fetch £30,000 each now.
At Dunstans Lane, Porsches greatly outnumbered Alfas. Take my word for it: nothing rusts like a 356. And let's get sensible: how many 911s have been made since 1964? How many survive? For very sensible marketing reasons, Porsche seem to keep those figures to themselves. Another lesson for Alfa Romeo.
The yard was owned by the Haywards – as fine a Dorset family as any of the great land owners. Born of the county, talented and empirically wise.
Clive Hayward – footballer and architect, evolved into God knows what else. His elder brother Norman – an even better footballer - acquired one of Dorset's most beautiful old houses; one he'd told his Mum he'd have, when he was a six year old. Mum, from Corfe: a gifted pianist. Dad (Norman Senior, also from Corfe) a self-taught Fabian. GBS and Upton Sinclair were among his mentors.
Some time before or after WW11, they'd bought a smallholding in what was then a semi-rural part of Poole.
Unfortunately, when Norman Senior introduced some new machine of an internal-combustion persuasion, he failed to eject its rusty predecessor. Given a suitably oily environment, such machines breed like rats. By the 60s, the garden was a thriving scrapyard, at the end of a suburban cul-de-sac.
I worked there in my holidays and some weekends. Collected every kind of motor vehicle, from their terminal situations. Cut them up with a glorious, vicious flame.
I restored order to the Hayward's office, feeling my way through desirable and probably illegal weapons.
I worked in Norman Junior's betting shop. Yankees, Union Jacks; all the complex accumulators, none of which I understood. Guys from the industrial estate would come in, mid-morning, with their Racing Posts, sandwiches, fags and half-crown stakes. Sometimes, they also claimed their winnings. I had to trust them; their mental arithmetic was better than anything you'd see in a darts game.
Meanwhile, back at the yard.
How to turn an A30 into a car.
• Remove engine/gearbox.
• Cut out gearbox cover.
• Do same to A35, Farina A40 – or, ideally, written-off Spridget – by cutting out all mounts and anything else that gets in the way.
• Swap components. Gravity will hold the new gearbox cover in place. But why not show willing, by tack welding it in a couple of places?
As anyone who's driven a 970, 1071, or 1275S Mini will know, the BMC A Series could be very good. Amazingly, they evolved from the 803cc, as fitted to A30s and early post-sidevalve Morris Minors.
(Sidevalve: why? The simplest way of opening/closing valves in a reciprocating engine is the chain-driven single overhead camshaft. Twin camshafts - even better, at the expense of a few more moving parts – have been around since 1912. The overhead valve engine, with its heavy, bendy pushrods, bows to inverted snobbery. Sidevalve? You can't even adjust the tappets without a mirror.)
The 803cc A Series was gutless. Fair enough; it was not intended to melt tarmac, but it always felt as if it was going to fall to bits; far less robust than a 1930 Riley 9 – which, if memory serves me well, had only two main bearings.
From scrap to...
Clarkson has been banging on again about the Alfa GTV6 with which he obviously had a very dysfunctional relationship.
Yes: the twin-plate clutch had its little ways. EB Spares supplies a single-plate replacement.
Yes: the petrol tank impedes a fold-down back seat. But if this is a hatchback, so is a fixed-head E-Type - which if it's a Series 1 3.8., will have a gearchange every bit as measured as that on a GTV6. Having ensured that the linkage on mine was properly assembed, I took a hacksaw to the gearlever, shortening it by about 3”. This transformed the change. A smaller steering wheel sharpened the steering, at the cost of making it even heavier. I kept the car for 17 years. I never thought of it as a hatchback.
The GTV6 was European Touring Car Champion 4 years straight: 1982 – 5. British Touring Car champion 1983. Of course Clarkson doesn't do racing. You have to be the late Gerry Marshall to make exhibitionist powersliding an effective way around a circuit.
At a Goodwood Revival, a few years ago, I heard some know-all mutter “that Moss – course he's past it now.” Yes - he looked slow...just before he overtook Martin Brundle.
By the way, have they ever published Clarkson's time as a Star in a Whatever-it-is Car?
Let me hasten to add that I respect his intelligence, business acumen and cynicism.
Slow gearchanges; nice engines.
Some time in 1973, there was a picture of me in Autosport, after I broke a record at Wiscombe Hill Climb
The fairly unlikely car was a 3.8 Mk 11 Jaguar, which like almost all Jaguars, prior to the Series 1 4.2 E Type, had a Moss (no relation) gearbox, dating back to my 1934 AC – if not earlier. Most cars in those ancient days lacked synchromesh. Most drivers just rammed the poor cogs through – which is why they were called crash gearboxes. The Moss gearbox provided very slow synchromesh on the top three gears. That was considered very generous indeed, until some time in the 60s.
Near the top at Wiscombe are two first gear hairpins: right, then left, separated by a short pedal-to-metal straight. That sunny day, I drew on my old car experience to combine heel & toe with double-declutching for those two bends.
Of course, the 3.8 had scored even more racing brownie points than the GTV6. And though it was just a bit big for a hill climb racer, it was probably the nicest proper, sensible car I've owned, till my 156.
Actually, it was Jaguars that got me into all this.
The first racing car I remember was the C-type Jaguar (18) that blew away the Alfas and Ferraris at Le Mans in 1953. Little boys always think their Dad's got the best car – and, to be honest, my father's jet black 3 ½ litre SS Jaguar did make the neighbour's Hillman Minx look slightly grey. Years later, my Jilly bought me just such a car from James Leasor, the thriller writer, who also had an SS100 and a supercharged Cord – an art deco American boulevard roadster, driven by his fictitious hero, Dr. Jason Love.
My first Jaguar was an XK140 fhc that I took it in part exchange from a farmer's son near Dorchester. He got my TR2. I got a car that didn't work. Clive Hayward towed me home and when I removed the head, I found that some of the valves were tied in neat knots.
Having got the thing running, I realised that the crank was slightly knotted, too. Stripping that XK engine, to remove the crank for regrinding, revealed beautiful details, like the oil-pressure-driven cam chain tensioner. Below the head, it was an old long-stroke cast iron dog. But it won Le Mans five times.
A 4.2 E-Type should have been the pick of my big cats. The best of the Series 1 cars, it retained the streamlined headlight covers and introduced a beautiful new gearbox. 60 in bottom; smooth as something smother than silk.
But I couldn't afford to correct its many foibles. In the end, I sold it to a guy who gave me the most frightening passenger experience of my life. He lived in Cirencester; we lived near Birdlip, about ten miles away.
“Can I drive you home?” Could I refuse him? Yes, I certainly would now. This is the old, undulating, single-carriageway Roman Road. It is pitch black and the rain is hammering down.
The engine sounds contentedly busy. The shock absorbers are tired. The screen is barely see-thru. The new owner whistles a merry tune. The speedo says 140. There is a canvas lid between me and some other place.
I have already had a near-death experience on this very road. I cringe.
Funny how things go round. When I was working at Dunstans Lane, Clive gave me an old Renault Dauphine. Pretty enough little thing, despite having panels in three colours: pale gold; mid grey; low-rent red. Might have been one of the Alfa-made models, though I didn't know about that bit of history then. Smoking 850 engine, 3-speed gearbox.
Up at the top of Old Wareham Road (down which I'd hit over 35mph in a Morrison Electricar Milkfloat) was another scrapyard, containing a Renault Gordini engine, with 4-speed gearbox and a cast multi-branch exhaust manifold. The result was quite gratifying, especially after some light work on the combustion chambers. I fabricated the usual twin 1 ¼” SU manifold, shortened the rear springs to provide negative camber on that treacherous swing axle – and cast a 15 kilo concrete infill for the spare wheel, stored in the front.
The result was excellent fun. It went far better than it looked; and continued to do so for over two years, at which time, I was speeding down the Roman Road.
Not 140. Not 80. But more than enough, when some prat on a Honda 90 shot out of a side road, straight in front of me, to the gas station on the other side of the road.
I missed him, and also the MGB coming the other way.
1959 Renault Dauphine, in 1970. Seat belt? What seat belt? As the little dear turns over three times, I think “I must live, for my family” The car leaves its mark thirty feet up a conker tree, before turning itself into a banana over a dry stone wall that still advertises the incident.
The Honda 90 pulls up at the pumps. Still has no idea what has just happened. The MGB passenger throws up on the tarmac. I am under the passenger-side scuttle –uninjured except for a nick that – I am assured at Cirencester A&E – is about a millimetre from my jugular.
It's all Dr. Porsche's fault, of course. Having designed a very fast 750kg rear- engined racing car for Auto Union (i.e. Adolf Hitler) he then goes and designs a very slow one for the same customer. Personally, I've never rated the Peoples' Car – though about 50 million people disagree with me.
When the Nazis lost, Renault nabbed Porsche, before he could start work on his eponymous sports car. Result, the Renault 4CV. Miles more fun than the Beetle, it evolved into the more stylish Dauphine - and also, I believe, the Skoda that saloon bar idiots used to make jokes about.
Rear engines are dubious. Rear engines with swing axles are (fill in your comments here.....)
The Porsche 356 – a hotted-up, flattened-out Beetle, with about 55bhp – made its debut in 1948, when Alfa's Tipo 158 was developing 350bhp from a similar-sized engine. This would soon rise to 450bhp, in the car that helped Fangio win his first World Championship.
Depending on gearing, the 158/9 was good for about 190mph. 5.5” crossply tyres. Drum brakes. And until the launch of the 159, swing axles...
It's not what you do. It's how you do it.
Benuti Saluti,
Justin Allison
©Justin Allison 28.3.09./11.5.09./13.5.09. 2094 words.
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My charity provides care for severely brain-damaged people. Charities always need money – but the primary purpose of this ad was to win hands-on support from voluntary workers.
(Pic: carer wiping patient's arse.)
Right now, a Tenner is just another piece of paper.
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Oil a squeak today
For 3-in-1 Oil, back in the 70s. Stylised pics showed everything from a bike to a door hinge.
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I went in for a tap washer. Chaotic showroom. Client planned expensive makeover. I suggested something cheaper...
(Pic. Intentionally unattractive showroom window.)
If we spent more on a fancy showroom,
you'd spend more on a fancy bathroom.
The success of that ad led to a January sale headline:
With what's knocked off, you'd almost think they were.
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As a Will Writer and Estate Planner, this client must address our mortality in a positive way.
“Embrace the future. Take control.”
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Why do couch potatoes often outlive sporty types?
Replace the minerals you've sweated away .
A gym poster, for a mineral-replacement product.
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Good ideas cost no more than bad ones.
My own strapline, for my own business. It's at the bottom of my letterhead.
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Editorial - Bournemouth Echo
New online agency offers first sale commission-free.
Yes - 0%, as Mr. Green, the 21 st Century Estate Agent, launches a radical approach to selling homes in Boscombe, Southbourne and Christchurch. Thereafter, it's just 0.75%.
A uniquely interactive website helps buyers create personal checklists of needs and wants. Vendors describe benefits that most agents miss - and upload photos to prove the point.
Improved communication between buyer, seller and agent saves everyone time, hassle and money.
Mr. Green's founder, Simon Ward says: “21 st Century technology and marketing techniques are essential to an effective, personal service”.
Visit www.mrgreenhomes.co.uk , or ring Simon on 0845 123 456.
(102 words)
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Editorial for local architect
Design the future. Learn from the past.
The Gerard Kelly architectural practice designs everything from 21 st Century schools, through small extensions, to sensitive schemes for listed buildings.
Its portfolio includes individual houses, housing association projects, office blocks and other commercial or industrial developments.
Regardless of the project, the common factor is commitment. As the practice principal - Gerry Kelly RIBA – says: “Good or bad, buildings are expensive – and everyone has to live with them for a long time. As architects, it's our job to make every building better. And remember: good design costs no more than bad design.”
After six successful years in Salisbury, Gerard Kelly are about to move into new premises. Watch this space for further details.
Speak to them on: 01722 333093
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The Parable of the Retail Outlets. (Delivered in a Cathedal Refectory.)
“Hello – Justin Allison: Copywriter.
Appropriately, in view of our location, this is a parable.
The parable of the retail outlets.
One – let's call it Waitrose – was thought costly.
Those who cared not for quality sought a cheaper shop.
And lo – the fruit and veg were wilting and the aisles were dismal.
But they saved £2.58 - enough to buy 10 fags.
At Waitrose, they might have spent it on something more wholesome.
Invested in life, rather than grudging its cost.
While some people see advertising as a grudge purchase, others see it as an investment in their future.
Especially when they realise that good ideas cost no more than bad ones.
Please refer me to anyone who believes in the power of good advertising.
Thank you.”
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New biz letter, to clients of an underperforming agency. JA/21.8.08.©
Dear.......
What do you pay each month, to have your business promoted?
Next rude question: are you getting your money's worth?
Do your sales communications – advertising, display, print, website, PR and so on - provide tangible, measurable results?
Are you making as much as you should be? Are you paying more than you should be?
And what is your current marketing agency playing at?
Black art, or hard work?
Given a modicum of talent, a lot of attention to detail and 24/7 commitment, the Holy Grail is in an office near yours.
Having identified a market, and developed a product or service to match it, you've already done most of the hard work.
You now need a consistently effective sales message, in all the appropriate media. “Here it is.” “Here's why it's special.” Real benefits. Real persuasion. Real Conviction. Real Style. Is that too much to ask?
Results + We've spent 50 years, helping our clients become richer.
That's a combined figure, you understand. Two mature advertising professionals, whose work can be seen on www.bestsellingcopywriter.co.uk and www.johnnewcreative.co.uk
As you can see, we aren't just another artsy-fartsy ‘creative' duo.
What we do is business. Commitment. Hard work. And yes, some Talent, too.
So type in those two domains. Have a look. And then, we hope you'll ring us.
Yours sincerely,
Justin Allison & John New
PS. We'll probably phone you anyway. © Justin Allison 21.8.08.
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