For many years Hamilton House used a direct sales technique which was, I think, unique.  If it wasn’t unique, it was certainly very unusual.

The idea was to write a nonsensical cover letter, based on a recurring theme – mostly centred on a mythical public house supposed near our offices.

The only selling point turned up in the PS, and in the accompanying literature that went out with the sales letter.

As a selling approach it was incredibly successful, and even now, four or five years since the last “Toppled Bollard” letter went out we get phone calls from people who remember them.  Indeed many people who claim never to read “junk mail” still quote the name of the pub to me.  Naturally, in return I mention that they never read direct mail and yet can tell me, all these years later, the name of a mythical pub that only ever got a mention in my sales letters.

The letter which had the British comedian Stanley Unwin (who resided in Northamptonshire where our offices are based) visiting the Toppled Bollard to give a lecture on Elvis Presley, was one of the most successful we ever did.

I am slowly putting up some of the old Bollard stories on the internet, as HHM prepares to launch a new and quite different set of stories.

The Unwin story is now up on the site at http://www.blog.toppled.info/archives/105

Tony Attwood