Chameleon PR

It is impossible to spend much time in tech PR without visiting Slough. After a decade or two of working for a London based technology PR agency, you know Paddington, Hayes & Harlington, West Drayton, Langley, Slough, Burnham, Taplow, Maidenhead, Twyford and Reading train stations like the back of your hand.

Training it up and down the UK’s M4 corridor (not quite such as sexy a moniker as “Silicon Valley”), you can’t help but get attached to places. Slough train station holds special affection, especially the platform 5; the one back to London. It’s not just the platform cafe that makes the platform vending machine seem like a Gordon Ramsey restaurant, it’s Station Jim.

Slough, a place so bad that it didn’t even quite top a survey of the UK’s most crap towns, has on its train station platform back to London a dead dog. A dead dog, stuffed in a glass box. That’s entertainment in Slough.

There’s a plaque that recalls Jim’s life, in a very Slough type way. Highlights include:

“The first trick taught him was to get over the stairs of the footbridge.”

“He started his duties as Canine Collector for the Great Western Railway Widows’ and Orphans’ Fund when he was about four months old but, because he was in bad health, he was only actually collecting about two years or so.”

“Yet he managed to place about £40 to the account of the Fund.”

“He only once had a piece of gold put in his box — a half sovereign.”

“There were only about five pieces of silver.”

“The majority of the coins he collected were pennies and halfpennies.”

“After a time he was taught to bark whenever he received a coin.”

“His railway journeys were few in number.”

“On one occasion he went to Leamington; that was his longest ride.”

Now perhaps it’s the Slough of Despond that the station inflicts on its commuters, but it seems that Station Jim was a dog that collected very little money during just two years of working, the majority of which was in small denominations, and he once went on a train to Leamington. Some of his main achievements included walking across a footbridge and barking which, for a dog, is not really a USP.

The final paragraph of Station Jim’s entry in Wikipedia reads:

The story of the Slough “Station Jim” is mentioned in the historical background feature accompanying the BBC movie Station Jim (2001). Although the movie involves an orphanage, the movie dog and storyline are not based on the true story, and the movie is not set in Slough.

So, Station Jim isn’t even the Station Jim in Station Jim. The orphanage made it in, put the eponymous dog didn’t. And nor did Slough.

Slough.

Sir Terry Leahy, the man responsible for transforming Tesco into the world’s third-largest retailer with sales exceeding £60 billion, is set to retire early next year after fourteen years as chief executive. His replacement is fellow scouser Philip Clarke, Tesco’s current chief information officer (CIO), who is responsible for overseeing the supermarket chain’s IT and computer systems, amongst other things.

The appointment, which came as little surprise in the City, is only one example of a modern trend of businesses promoting CIOs to the role of chief executive officer. As companies become more reliant on technology to revamp their business, CIOs now have unprecedented visibility over the running of the company, giving them the platform needed for promotion. Indeed, dozens of former CIOs now fill the top corporate job as head of operations, including Peter McCann at Fidelity and Reliance Industries’ Ashish Chauhan, who will be familiar to cricket lovers as CEO of the Indian Premier League side Mumbai Indians.

We are now in a world where the best CIOs do not stay as CIOs. As technology plays an ever-more important role in the development of business, expect the position of CEO to be filled by individuals coming from a CIO background. Philip Clarke is not the first to make the leap, and he certainly won’t be the last. The old joke that CIO stands for ‘Career Is Over’, simply no longer applies to modern business.

Two weeks have passed since England’s national football team arrived home from the FIFA World Cup, and the buzz from South Africa is still ringing in their ears. The buzz, however, is not the result of excessive celebration after winning the world cup, Germany’s fantastic performance in the first knockout stage saw to that. Instead, the ringing was the result of the Vuvuzela, an instrument so annoying that many fans in the UK turned away from the action.

The 2ft plastic horn, which produces a droning monotone note, became the unofficial symbol of the World Cup in South Africa, with fans from every nation embracing the instrument on match day. Football lovers in the UK, however, were not so embracive, comparing the noise to ‘a swarm of killer bees’.

Research carried out by OnePoll.com revealed that six out of ten fans who tuned in at home were doing so with the volume turned down in order to silence the constant horn-blowing, and over 70 percent of those interviewed called for the instrument to be banned from stadiums altogether.

The criticism did not come from fans alone. High profile footballers such as Portugal and Real Madrid ace Cristiano Ronaldo also condemned the noise, stating: ‘It is difficult for anyone on the pitch to concentrate. A lot of players don’t like them, but they are going to have to get used to them.’ Websites, such as antivuvuzelafilter.com, even went as far as to create a download which generated a series of inverted sound waves in a bid to cancel out the noise.

But did the instruments really ruin the World Cup? Sure, the constant droning of a single note can irritate even the most hardcore football fan, but was it in any way different to the drunken, and often abusive, chants screamed across English terraces?

Reports suggesting the vuvuzela could have been banned from stadiums were quickly quashed by FIFA chief Sepp Blatter, and I for one welcomed the move. The vuvuzela, despite its irritating tendencies, is a part of the footballing tradition in South Africa, and something which the locals are proud of. If the instruments were banned, would the South American dancers, who flock to stadiums up and down their continent, also be repressed in Brazil during the 2014 World Cup? Would the Mexican wave follow suit?

Although I’m in little rush to purchase ‘the horn of Africa’ myself, the vuvuzela should be embraced as a colourful aspect of the World Cup, one which gave locals the chance to express themselves to the world. I do still hope it’s confined to South Africa alone, but with Sainsbury’s pushing to sell 75,000 vuvuzelas by the tournament’s end, you can expect to hear the unforgettable sound at a football ground near you.

Until then, we still have one more semi-final to look forward to, with my money placed firmly on Germany to avenge their Euro 2008 final loss at the hands of Spain. Indeed, whoever progresses from tonight’s semi-final, expect a mouthwatering clash against the Netherlands in Cape Town on Sunday, with the Dutch aiming to lift their first Jules Rimet Trophy.