When I was a child, I remember watching some grainy, black-and-white footage of an 8-foot zombie-type guy. He had a pudding bowl haircut, banged-up green skin, and bolts protruding either side of his neck. Not one for scary movies, I’m sure I would have scuttled out of the room and tried hard to forget the image I just saw.

Many decades later I can still see the original image of Frankenstein in my head as clear as day – his britches too short, his arms too long, his body lurching from side-to-side as he lumbers after his next target.

Turns out this childhood trauma ended up being a great metaphor for a very common marketing affliction, what I call Frankenstein marketing…

David Ogilvy, a cantankerous, controversial and brilliant Scotsman whom I adored – built his advertising empire using only direct response marketing.

The very first direct response advertisement he wrote wasn’t for a Fortune 100 company, a Fortune 5000 company or even a scrappy but well funded start-up. As the surprising story goes, it was for …