I've always made it a principle not to use the blog for any PR or advertising...it's for my pleasure and not for anyone's commercial gain. But that hasn't stopped me being inundated by offers from PRs. The e-mails usually go..."I've been reading your blog, it's really interesting and I was wondering if you'd like to write about blah blahs product". Usually, blah, blah's product is something for a two year old or for a girl or something that is otherwise completely irrelevant. So they get ignored. As a PR myself it's brought home to me the horror of how bad my profession is at what it does.
However, this week, I received a missive from a PR who had actually read the blog, and got the targeting spot on:
As a Dad, you may not get the chance to become a Nana one day - but you certainly might be a Papa and can appreciate the affection the UK public have for their nans nationwide. And with your son's nan being in Cyprus, I'm sure he'd love a way to show how much he cares. As such, I am emailing you to tell you about a campaign I'm currently working on with Shreddies that gives people the chance to honour their nanas by asking the question - Does your nana have what it takes to get the position of best Nana Job in the World!
The Shreddies campaign, which was launched on Facebook last week, will see the UK's best nana knitter win the opportunity to be the Official On-Packet Knitting Nana for Shreddies. Full details of the campaign can be found on facebook. You can also see more about how nanas make Shreddies and spend their time in the factory at the interactive, video, game and fact-filled site at knittedbynanas.com.
The current frontrunner for the job is Madge Waken from Stevenage, Hertforshire who has already generated over 1,300 votes. We'd love some more entries from Scotland and there is plenty of time to drum up support.
I have attached the release below for your information. If you have any questions or need video links or photography for use in the blog, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Best,
Ryan Levitt
Anyway...it seems fun to me. I might even nominate Grandma in Cyprus...although she gave up knitting a while ago....I used to get some spectacular jumpers...in the meantime, I'm going to go and get a box of Shreddies for tomorrows breakfast.
And on a different note altogether, the boy got a new mobile phone this week...his last one had an enormous crack on the screen and was looking decidedly the worse for wear. As mobiles are just about the most important accessory a teen can have, I couldn't face the thought of the tears and tantrums if it died altogether. Many of his friends have iphones...which seems a ridiculous extravagance to me - but that's Essex for you. He was given a Samsung B2110. The box has a mountain biker picture on it, and it can be dropped into water. In fact it can be dropped onto concrete. It is a tough phone. It has a torch. And an SOS function which will text four of your nearest and dearest if you're in trouble. But, as we now have discovered, it has one function that all phones should have. It has alarms to remind you if you are a Muslim, Christian, Sikh, or Hindu to pray. The Muslim one goes off five times a day. Each alarm has a ringtone that to my ignorant mind sounds exactly as it should and is accompanied by an image of your favoured deity.
May the Lord be praised.
