Monday Monday

I had a bloody cracking Monday this week, the best Monday for ages. Let me share the higlights.My usual Monday morning involves driving my spectacularly better looking over half (I'm still in the dog house after the swine flu article I wrote) to work from Doncaster to Wakefield, she has just been appointed communications assistant at Wakefield NHS. After I drop her off, I immediately switch frequency from the babbling buffoonery of Chris "my definition of comedy is playing annoying sound bites of Strictly Come Dancing judges laughing" Moyles, to the voice of reason and some underrated witticism of Nicky Campbell. The topic of discussion was David Cameron's plans to cut the incapacity benefit by £25 and enforce more stringent tests to vet the supposed incapacitated masses. I'm all for getting the lazy sponges who abuse the system out from in front of their 50inch tax payer bought moron boxes, they can always Sky plus the Jeremy Kyle show.

The worrying part of the discussion came from a man in his fifties who had lost his sight two years previous and after a long career working in the manufacturing industry was forced to claim benefits. He told Nicky that he was "suicidal" over the thought of losing £25 of his £92.50 that he gets weekly. Obviously the gentleman was a legitimate claimer and Nicky tried his hardest to re-assure him that Cameron's proposal would only affect the fraudsters. It was clear that Cameron's plans had worried many and although some of his messages seemed to have been lost in translation, I do think he should have set clearer guidelines in his proposal before scaring the wits out of the genuine cases. Politics hasn't previously been a passion of mine, but I have to admit as uncool as it is I am starting to get rather interested in the political ding dong between Brown and Cameron.

Monday ended as beautifully as it started, I shared an evening with my gorgeous, intelligent and funny girlfriend (You can almost hear the shovel). We attended a Lecture by the head of sponsorship and promotion at Sony, Carl Christopher. He was a refreshing change from the usual "suits" who give our guest lectures, dressed in Fred Perry cardigan and black jeans, he reminded me that P.R is cool. With talk of Richard Benson and Kate Moss he explained how his team took the Playstaion brand from the niche markets to the global stage. Playstation embraced counter culture, made journalists speak their language and gave consumers an experience not just a video game. Carl crammed Playstations lifetime into an exciting one hour dialogue, he talked of the rise of the celebrity and how brands no longer have mystery. These days Playstation will use Kate Moss to launch their products, like in the case of the Singstar game, whereas ten years ago they would use niche magazines like Vince Noir's favourite "The Face". Instead of sending their newest games to influential journalists to create the "water cooler moments" they now inundate premiership footballers with piles of equipment.

Carl concluded by offering his opinion on what is the best personal attribute to have in PR, he told us that honesty and transparency will get you a long way, as long as you are driven of course. All in all a very interesting evening.

The group pitch for Ptarmigan Bell Pottinger is coming along very nicely, watch this space!