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Click here - to visit my web site www.the-real-mccoy.com and read about some award winning direct marketing campaigns
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| "In Europe, we have needed a book like this for years - how to craft, elegantly and effectively your sales and marketing material. Not to be missed - bravo Robert!
Alastair Tempest - Director General, FEDMA - The European Direct Marketing Association |
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"Persuasive Direct Marketing - what you say and how you write it"
is the only Irish book on direct marketing copywriting
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Click on the 'Keeping in touch with you' button above to make sure that you - (and your colleagues and friends, if you wish) receive the sweetest pickings of future editions of our ezine each time they come round
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 Wisdom & Wit
Think about it
We are influenced by those around us; choose carefully by whom you wish to be influenced.
Dan J. Sanders author of Built to serve
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It's darkest where the light is feared
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Only kidding, right?
If you're going to tell the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.
Billy Wilder (1906 - 2002) Film producer and director.
An inexperienced but energetic young battleship officer received his first major assignment - taking the ship out to sea. He knew the captain would be watching and wanted to impress him. He had studied hard and felt that he could do it well.
Soon the young officer had the large crew in action and the ship in motion. In fact, he had the ship out of the harbour and onto the sea in record time for an inexperienced commander. As the various units of the crew reported to him by radio he confidently took their calls and answered their follow-up questions. Then he got a call on the land-to-sea line. The caller's voice sounded familiar, and as the message unfolded the officer realised why.
"Good job in getting underway so quickly," said the caller, " but you might want to remember one more thing: always make sure your captain - in this case, me - is on board before you sail."
Adaptedfrom Top20Fun.com
A Natural high
If we want to alter our brain chemistry, we don't have to take expensive drugs - we can just smile.
Dale Anderson - Author and Speaker.
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The Art of Good Management
in only 156 words
A manager wanted to avoid ordering his group to do things, and instead let them use their discretion. He began prefacing his assignments with leading phrases such as "When you have a moment..." and "You might like to think about..." However, his employees were soon saying, "well I haven't had a chance" and "I did think about it, but ..."
The manager saw this as disobedience, but his employees felt that they were exercising their options. Both sides needed a middle ground, which could only be reached through more meaningful communication. For example, the manager could say, "We need X done by next Friday, but I'll leave exactly when you do it, up to you" or "Your team's error rate increased by 20 percent on the last assignment and that needs correction. You might want to inspect their work more often, but I'll let you decide how to make the improvements." Options do work; vagueness doesn't.
Adapted from: the boss from outer space.
Make up your mind to be happy, learn to find pleasure in simple things.
R.L. Stevenson (1850 - 1894)
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For example: "John you might be interested in visiting this unusual Irish thatch owners' web site" |
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Happy Christmas! |
Happy Christmas ,
I guess I'm a traditionalist ... and when it comes to Christmas, there is nothing that I like better than to hear warm traditional Christmas greetings and to see cold traditional snowy Christmas scenes.
And here is a wonderful Christmas greetings picture to prove it.
It's a picture of a thatch cottage in Galway on a cold mid-winter morning. The cottage is about 200 years old and it has weathered many a frosty morning and windy winter storm. It was there during the famine years. It survived the night of the famous 'big wind'. It was already 'old' at the foundation of the State. Its walls are made of mud and its roof is made of straw ... and it's one of approximately 1,500 traditional thatch homes still surviving in Ireland.
Fifteen, twenty years ago, you could have added one or maybe two more noughts to that figure and have counted the number of thatch houses in Ireland in terms of as many as 150,000, or even more! Today, they are an endangered part of our heritage and, sadly, are rapidly disappearing.
Two months ago, in an effort to draw attention to the plight of this very beautiful part of our heritage, my wife and I set up a website www.irishthatchowners.com
In time, my hope is that many owners of thatch houses in Ireland will feature their houses on this web site. And that between us all we will create a forum of thatch owners who will shout 'Stop' to the demolition of any of the precious remaining thatch houses in Ireland.
Hey! What's has this all got to do with marketing and copywriting? Absolutely Nothing!
But if you know of anyone who owns, or lives in, a thatch cottage in Ireland, will you tell them to visit www.irishthatchowners.com
In the meantime, have a wonderful Christmas and a very happy New Year!
Talk to you soon.
Kind regards
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Direct Marketing Conference in Budapest - a huge success |
This year I was invited to be a guest speaker at the Hungarian Direct Marketing Association's annual conference in Budapest in November.
I guess part of the reason why I was invited is because last year a direct mail campaign which I created with my good friend, Bernard Kelleghan, of Kell Marketing Design, Dublin, won the top direct marketing award at the Golden Dove Competition for Excellence in Direct Marketing.
That was a nice international award to win. But nicer still was the opportunity to visit Budapest and be part of a genuinely fantastic direct marketing conference. It was a wonderful venue, with a great programme and some of the friendliest direct marketing experts and practitioners you could ever have the pleasure to meet.
The basic language of the conference was English and everything - and I mean everything - books, leaflets, CD's, presentation summaries and more, was beautifully produced and presented in both Hungarian and in English. And for those few speaker who didn't have a 100% fluency in English there were crystal clear interpreters. All in all, it was a super conference.
But what I particularly liked about it was the fantastic atmosphere all around me. There was a huge - and I mean really huge - buzz about the place. Believe me, it's well worth your while to go and observe and see, and feel and hear what is happening in the world of direct marketing in these rapidly developing economies of Eastern Europe.
Keep an eye out for the dates of next year's conference... and go if you possibly can. By the way, do you know that Ryan Air has just started flying directly from Dublin to Budapest? |
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Raising the Bar in Digital Marketing |
Raising the Bar in digital Marketing
This is the title of a fascinating half-day seminar organised by the Irish Direct Marketing Association in dublin recently.
So much information was imparted, by so many world class experts, in such a short period of time that this was a hugely stimulating conference experience.
Again and again throughout the morning the speakers bombarded us with figures, facts and the most brilliant creative fantasies. It was fabulous fun.
And it was incredibly interesting too! Have a look at some of the statistics in the attached PDF document and you'll pick up some amazing insights.
Click here to read more
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Grammar without Grief
Recently, I got a gift of a classroom wall chart, which I would recommend to everyone. I understand that it's an early 19th Century print and it was used in Church of Ireland schools.
And if you've long forgotten what an article is or where a preposition stands, click on thelink below to have a closer look.
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Greetings!
You are always welcome to call me or contact me |
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If you have a brochure to write, a newsletter to create, a direct mail campaign to launch, a sales letter or the marketing message of a web site to compose, or a charity appeal to communicate, talk to me...
... I'll be delighted to help you make your written sales communication message more persuasive or your charity appeal more effective.
Kind regards,
Robert Hayes-McCoy Copywriters
Phone: +353 `1 2603949
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