Charles on… anything that comes along

Seems there’s a big do on in which PR people are telling each other that the world is changing. Word up!

Stuart Bruce is doing an interesting job trying to blog it: posts starting here and then follow forward. It’s pretty much rolling up there in real time, if you’re reading this on Wednesday.

The Q+A is interesting. (Mark! Mellor! Where’s the Firefly blog? Should there be one? Shouldn’t your RSS logo be on the front page?)

Andrew Morrison, senior comms manager, Coca-Cola Africa talked about the YouTube mentos mints video and how Coke has now commissioned the creators to create an official Coca-Cola video. He asks does he say a split between those who will embrace the new technology and those who still want to more formally “control the message”.

Trouble is, you can’t control the message any more. You can only take part in the argument. Which is OK if you’ve got a winning argument.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Insert long word here: is this blog wordier than others? (26 May 2006; score: 78.84%)
• Tagged! Now for three fictional journalists (28 February 2006; score: 37.06%)
• The three blogs you should read? Try three hundred (14 November 2007; score: 30.1%)

This one, however, relates not to the one at this moment married to some Scouser, but to the Heather Mills, the very good journalist who now works at Private Eye (though it’s said that the former has touted the work of the latter as her own, which I find bizarre).

Heather Mills NMTAS (not married to a Scouser) used to work at The Independent, where she was the Home Affairs correspondent. This job doesn’t deal with affairs allegedly had by Scousers, their wives or others, but instead to the grubby reality of life lived through the courts and the Home Office - the child abuse, murders, sink estates, attacks on people, all that sort of grit.

Not that PR people quite got this message. Which is why Heather, who was famously short with those who weren’t up to speed (but lovely with everyone else), was one day heard to have the following conversation on the phone:

“Hello?.. No, Home Affairs does not deal with soft furnishings.”

Bang.

Though one must say they don’t look dissimilar. Here’s images of HMM (ie MTAS); and here’s the only one I could find of HM NMTAS. Interesting to contrast the expressions on the two pages.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• A rapper with a cochlear implant? Yup, there is (18 January 2008; score: 24.16%)
• And since everyone else is saying it... here's my "Apple on Intel" story. From April 2000 (6 June 2005; score: 21.27%)
• PR folk: here's a really good reason not to send attachments to my Guardian address (1 February 2006; score: 19.32%)