The Toppled Bollard

Common sense suggests that you can’t advertise one thing by advertising something quite different, and yet that is what we have done for years with the Toppled Bollard stories.  This one was headed “Advertising Holidays in Cornwall”.  As usual the journey is somewhat surreal, but the end takes us to the real start.

Here’s the piece…

It is rare that a day passes on which I am not asked by a member of the marketing fraternity to write an advertisement for one or other of our esteemed local tourist organisations.  Of course I turn down most such demands – one can spread one’s talents too thinly after all – but occasionally a plea catches my eye, pulls at my heart-strings and I accede to the request.

Such was the case when I was asked by the Cornish Tourist Bureau to boost visitor numbers with a few well-chosen words.   Having spent many a happy holiday in our most southerly county, I agreed and repaired at once to my local hostelry in order to undertake the necessary research for this project.  

Research is, in my view, the key to all successful advertisement writing, and in this regard my fellow imbibers did not fail me.  Opinion in the Toppled Bollard was clear: Penzance is known both for having the highest murder rate in Britain and for its wonderful food. 

According to my colleagues these two characteristics of the local populace often combine and it is not uncommon for Penzantine chefs to be stabbed in the kitchen for making a small error of judgement over a local recipe.  This seemed a good starting point for an advert, the sort of local colour that today’s intrepid explorers love, and I noted it with glee.  

Talk then moved on to the issue of the Cornish vendetta.  These normally start as simple local disputes, as for example in February this year when the favoured ox of Prince Gwennap – a local ruler – disappeared one dark and stormy night.   Five weeks later the death toll was 1,900, Helston and Falmouth were depopulated, the local bovine supply had dried up, and chefs were forced to turn to halibut – with limited success and the subsequent demise of many of those working in the hotel and catering industry.  

I was also told that the men involved in such disputations refuse to shave until honour is re-established while the women nail up the blood stained shirts of their victims on the outer walls of their homes as trophies.   With such local colour I felt the advert worked well.  

Tony Attwood  

PS:   For some reason one or two local folk have since expressed disquiet about my campaign, claiming I have confused Cornwall with Corsica .   It was thus while resident for several jolly weeks in “Black Snithy”, Helston’s magnificently preserved Victorian prison, that I wrote the enclosed “Four Point Plan”.  It contains in summary everything I know about raising response rates when selling into schools.  I hope you find it helpful.

Many years ago I wanted to ensure that everyone who was a potential customer of Hamilton House Mailings plc, at least knew about us, and thought nice things about us, even if they were not our clients. 

Of course most of these people would not be our customers - we were not looking to get 50% of the direct marketing market.  But I wanted a situation that would mean that when they were thinking about changing suppliers, our name would come to mind in a positive light.

The route that I chose was both simple and unique.   I decided to write a sales letter laced with humour to all our potential customers.   I did it, and on the day it hit I started to get a really good response.

Clearly the idea worked.   People liked the idea of a funny story as a sales letter.   But what about the follow up?

I tried a couple of different pieces over the next six weeks, and then an idea hit me on the nose.  If I treated my sales letter as part of a on-going story, I could not only keep the humour running month after month.  It would make the writing easier, and it would bring a continuity to the whole idea.

So I decided to set the stories in a public house.   Seeking a name for the establishment, I asked myself what distinguished our part of the country, from anywhere else?  What would our mythical local pub be called that reflected our town?  

Driving home that night I realised the answer.   On any one day, most of the Keep-Left signs in the middle of the streets of Corby are knocked over, having been hit by trucks, cars and (mostly) over-excited pedestrians.  So I called the pub The Toppled Bollard.

Now, years later, I constantly get phone calls, which run along lines like this.   “I’m not a customer of yours, but I’ve been reading your Toppled Bollard stories for years.  Very funny.  Anyway, I wanted to talk about doing a mailing to…”

And I say to them, “Look, this is junk mail you are talking about.  You are supposed to say, ‘You are destroying the rain forests.  Stop sending it to me.  Where did you get my name from anyway?’   But you are not saying that.  You are telling me the name of a pub that I made up and put in a sales letter.   It’s not even in the headline but you know it!  Do you mean that you have actually been reading all this?”

 And they laugh and admit that yes, they have.  And they have remembered.  And they know what Hamilton House Mailings is, and I confess that the Toppled Bollard is a myth, and I can’t take them out there for a pint, but there is a very nice restaurant just down the hill in the People’s Independent Republic of Rutland, if they’d like to visit.

And we have a jolly chuckle, and then settle down to business.

(Of course it is not always like this.  About once every six months I get an anonymous letter telling me that I know nothing about direct mail, and “do I really think anyone would ever buy anything as a result of *** like this?”   I quite enjoy those, mostly because they are anonymous.   There’s something about people who write anonymous letters that appeal to me…)

Since then I have helped a number of companies follow this route (the Toppled route, not the anonymous letter route), finding them a local issue to write about and a series of characters whose stories they can tell.

It works and it is fun.   So I thought I would go back and revisit some of the odd moments of the Bollard from years gone by.   And maybe talk a bit about which stories worked and which one didn’t.  And why.

There’s plenty of post-modern irony in this tale.   You’ll enjoy it.

I’ve just got to nip down the hill for a quick one, and then I’ll be back telling the full story of the Bollard and all who pass by her door.  “Don’t touch that dial” (as they used to say).

Meanwhile if you would like to converse with me on topics Bollardic, or come to that, anything else, give me a buzz.  01536 399 000 usually works.  I always enjoy a chat.