How not owning a yacht can be a matter of deliverance, and a guiding light in writing advertisements.

Last night at the Toppled Bollard dance club on the Southern Reach of Rutland, a woman asked me to dance.

After the dance she said, “Wow you are good. Do you own a yacht?”

I confessed I did not, but added that I had lived in Poole for 8 years and had done a lot of boating at that time – as most people living in that area do.

“Such a shame,” she said. “If you owned a yacht I’d have to marry you.”

I must confess to being rather taken aback by this conversation, but it served to remind me that it is always possible to think one is engaged in one activity (in this case dancing) when in fact the other party considers this to be something quite different (such as a proposal of marriage).

This is why I always recommend that one should not run the same advertisement over and over again, but rather keep changing the advert - just in case one’s message is being a trifle misunderstood.

Then when you find an advert that truly works, you can come back to it and either run it again or, better still, tweak it slightly so that you keep the readership (which will vanish if people think “I’ve seen that before”) while retaining the successful style and approach.

(Incidentally, in case you are wondering, not all of these little tales about women asking me to dance are reported with 100% accuracy, but curiously, this conversation did actually happen.)

If you want to know more about schools.co.uk and its work in selling to schools, please do call us on 01604 880 927. I promise it won’t be me that answers (and so you won’t have a long rambling talk about dance clubs). Or email Stephen@schools.co.uk - he’s awfully nice and generally liable to be more sensible than I am.