Uniquely among copywriters Tony Attwood has combined the academic research of universities with the results gathered by his own team working at Hamilton House.

As Tony explained in 2006,

"We have been greatly aided by the existence of the companies within the Hamilton House - companies for whom my colleagues and I have the task for preparing direct mail advertisements.  

"I have always wanted to experiment in direct mail, trying new ideas and seeing where possibilities take us, but one cannot readily do this with one's customers.  First, they want results quickly, and second they get nervous when they see the unexpected.

"So we have used the mailings of companies such as Hamilton House Mailings plc, First and Best Education Ltd, Hamilton House PR Agency, and other organisations with whom we are closely attached to see exactly where our ideas take us.  In each and every case we have monitored the results and found our what works and what does not.

"One of the most famous experiments involved the adding of just two sentences to a promotion that I wrote for School Improvement Reports - another Hamilton House company.   I looked at the piece with and without the extra sentences, and really could not decide which way was best.  The sentences could, I thought, round of the piece nicely, or they could distract from my main message.

"The promotion was for a report on failing schools and how they could be turned around, and cost £49.50.   We needed a 0.5% response rate to break even and a 1% response rate to see a profit that would make further promotion worthwhile.   The promotion with the extra sentences brought in a remarkable 2.5% response rate.  That without the extra brought in nothing.

"I recall spending weeks pondering these results, and trying to understand exactly what I had said in those two extra sentences that could make all the difference.  In the end I theorised that what we had there was indeed a summary of the offer, but not just any old summary.  It was a summary that was put into such a cogent form that the reader could hold it in his/her mind and say "this report gives me x".   Naturally I then tried to replicate this in other adverts I wrote - and thus the research continued.

"I think it is this approach that has differentiated our work at Hamilton House from that of the people who just come up with a list of do's and don'ts.  Direct mail is much more complex than that, and we do need to take into account not just our findings through hundreds of mailshots, but also what the academics say."

Last modified: October 18, 2006