The good thing about waking up, according to Keith Richards, is that you actually wake up at all. For those of us who are less impressed with by our instinctive diurnal desires, mornings tend to be a moment filled with the familiar. Same light. Same noise. Same bed. Usually.

But this morning I’d bet my LV incased Stratocaster that most Sydneysiders would have felt an eerie sense of dread before they peeled back the curtains. The light was unnervingly different and the morning shadows just a little more sinister. When they did, they would have seen little but a deep orange fog shrouding everything in view. There was no sun. No cloud. And not much else beyond 30ft. The air felt heavy. Strangely, there was very little noise. The world had gone quiet.

It was confronting. News stations repeated warnings for the young and infirm to stay indoors; ferry services were stopped (presumably they’re little use in tomato soup); trains slowed; traffic accidents sky-rocketed; and the air choked those who dared to make the dash between house and car.

10,000 miles away, at the very moment Sydney was waking up, the world’s leaders were waving fond farewells in New York at the close of a relatively fruitless effort by the UN to get the climate change agenda back on track. It was difficult to miss the poignancy of the news from New York whilst eating cornflakes in the middle of an orange mist.

Of course, it would be a very long bow to connect Sydney’s dramatic weather conditions with failed policy on climate change – although some may disagree. But what struck me most about the inter-relationship between the news and what was going on outside my front door was this.

The biggest challenge facing those who demand action on climate change policy, is that their evidence is based on history and the statistical likelihood of the polar ice-caps melting. That might be appealing to historians and statisticians, but it does like to stimulate the senses of the masses. How many of us, after all, vent our rage at the apparent inaction of political leaders as we potter through the back streets of our respective cities, alone in our cars, with little more than a Fair Trade coffee to quench our thirst and our morality.

Choking on red dust is a little different. It gives you a taste of what the impact of climate change could be like for generations to come. It is literal; it is tangible; and it is, without wanting to overstate the point, the power of the experience.

Which leads me to think that activation of the masses is far more likely when the future is presented to them through a sensory experience. I’ve yet to see this anywhere – probably because it’s not the easiest thing to do. An Inconvenient Truth, for all it’s success, was based on conjecture and threat. But, from the quality and impact of what I see come out of some our the offices in the support of product and service experience, I can not believe that someone does not have the capacity and where-with-all to create “future pods” – a place where the future becomes a reality; a place where the real impact of climate change can be seen.

Such an initiative has the distinct challenge of treading a fine line between future fact and science fiction. It also presents the possibility of arrest and incarceration if taken to its ‘enth degree. But it is not without merit.

Five hours after the orange fog lifted, things are getting back to normal. The ferries are running again, the motorways have freed-up; the sky is blue; and the ocean is back to its crystal green again. And whilst the view may be idyllic once more, I still have the taste of a scary future in my throat and it won’t go away.

Our digital radio at home, so the instruction manual tells me, gives us access to live broadcasts from more than 10,000 radio stations around the world. Whilst I’ll leave it to the consumer watchdog extremists to test such a claim, I have no reason to doubt its statistical validity. If you’ve ever tried to find a decent tune whilst dialling up your radio anywhere within a five-mile radius of Manhattan, you’ll know that ten thousand accessible radio stations globally is probably on the low side.

Of course the first thing you do once you’ve plugged this natty device in, is go straight to the country index in a bid to find the most obscure place in the world. Burundi caught my fancy and, after a 20 second connection time, I was hooked into the lyrical majesty of a bit of local hip-hop. Azerbaijan, a half dozen country tags before it, didn’t fare quite so well.

But all that soon changed as one story grabbed my attention and the little black duke box on the kitchen bench has since been permanently tuned into one programme and one programme alone – BBC Radio Four.

Apart from ensuring my young children’s’ adoption of the slack, Australian drone is marginally delayed (although a mix of John Humphries and Bob the Builder has ended up giving them some kind of Lancashire thump to their current tongue), it also ensures I remain connected with an international (read BBC) perspective on world events. Right now the most important political story (barring Pakistan and Sri Lanka), is the Telegraph’s expose of UK MPs making a mockery out of the parliamentary expense claim system. It’s more riveting than the Archers. Alas, it’s far more depressing too.

Flying up to London with British Airways this morning, I had a chance to paw over the details as published by the UK paper. This is clearly far more than another absurd and frustrating abuse of power. This could be crushing. If it not for the fact that the Telegraph had done the right thing and published details of extravagant claims from both sides of the House, the Labour Party may well have been dragged back to the Kinnock Ages post haste. The fact that so many had their nose in the trough has simply crushed any hope of building mid-term public trust and confidence in political leadership.

It could not have come at a worse time too. Here is a government that has spent the past year fighting on three major fronts: fiercely defending the merits of democracy; desperately performing triage on the remnants of Thatcher’s’ privatisation model of capitalism; and publically parading the ‘fat cats’ of business as the followers of the Marquis de Sade. That battle plan is now in tatters.

System failure or exploitative greed, British politicians are being accused of hypocracy at one end of the spectrum and criminal intent at the other. The truth has almost become an irrelevance. The single biggest difference between a British politician exploiting the system and, say, Bernie Madoff doing the same is that the one was voted into power, the other built his power base on the principles that that power supported. Neither is justified and both smack of greed, regardless of the motive.

More important still is the fact that the government had charted it’s path out of the economic gloom with the promise of greater transparency, strong commercial principles and the warm and fuzzy sentiment that now that everyone’s had their fingers burnt, the future will be so much more honest and harmonious.

If this chart was drawn up on the back of a minister’s expense claim, it could not be worth less. Past actions are not the issue here. Instead we are reminded (again) that if there is opportunity to garner unfair advantage at others expense, far too many will do what’s possible rather than search for the moral fortitude to do what’s right. As the backdrop to future economic recovery, it’s a pretty troubling reality.

Business management is never easy at the best of times. And right now we’re in of the worst of times or, worse still, the end of the beginning of the worst of times. A fear of the unknown is consuming so many companies and organisations that management teams are simply tripping over themselves in a bid to stay upright.

No business sector is hurting more than the retail space. Which is why it’s the last place you’d look for counsel on how to deal with the macroeconomics of commercial survival. But step off the high street and find your way to a favourite hide-away store and there’s plenty to see and learn. Shop-keeping is the MBA, stripped bare.

Shop-keepers, that is the best shop-keepers, keep it simple. Which means everything they do gravitates around three things: Product; Passion; and Service.

Think about that for a moment. As a modus operandi it is as applicable to selling paper as it is to selling insurance. It doesn’t discount innovation. Nor does it ignore diversification. It does stick firmly to the principles of knowing what the buyer wants, having it in stock, knowing everything there is to know about it and making the customer feel like your shop is their second home.

The word on the lips of many in the public relations and communications industry is ‘survival’. Who’ll fall first? The boutique or the behemoth? Well, in the spirit of ambiguity, it could be neither or it could be both. Because size or speciality are rarely the driving force behind agency success. Product, passion and service are.

In many respects, the biggest frustration about these economic times is that they shroud the extraordinary and tumultuous change through which the communications industry is going. In the US, forecasters are predicting that in the next four years paid for advertising will fall by 70%, whilst spend on content development will quadruple. That puts every communications discipline on a collision course, ensuring he with the best idea and the best execution comes out on top. The democratisation of communication is coming your way.

But even then – even if we see such a fundamental change in the communications landscape – product, passion and service will still define the winners and the losers of our industry. They are the bedrock of commerce, good times or bad. And that means that those in our industry who are searching for inspiration through the pages of marked down management books, would do well to put down their reading material and talk to the book shop owner instead.

PRs are quick to defend their position as credible, valued counsellors and nine point nine times out of ten they are absolutely justified in doing so. Public relations is an immensely powerful communications tool when used properly.

Problem is, there’s always a lowest common denominator. This morning, I received this from King World Wide Communications.

‘MUSIC MOGUL SISTER HAS HOMECOMING WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS AFTER BEING SHOT IN LOS ANGELES
Famous Los Angeles Hip Hop Mogul ”The Games” sister Sherani Taylor aka ”BFLY” will speakout for the first time after violently being shot. She was recently released from the hospital and will be treated to a family and friends homecoming on Wed. February 4, 2008 – 11am at Roscoes House of Chicken and Waffles located at 5006 West Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles.

KING WORLD WIDE COMMUNICATIONS

contact Todd Scott 516-312-6573

This was such an utterly appalling release that I had no moral choice but to call Todd to ask him why I received this note. I was particularly keen to find out two things. Firstly how and why he expected me, in Sydney, to rock up to Roscoes House of Chicken and Waffles in Los Angeles to hook up with BFLY and check out her bullet wounds. And secondly, how bad being ‘violently shot’, as opposed to just being shot, actually was.

To his credit Todd was enormously apologetic, blaming the fact that he had ‘borrowed’ a friends media list. The ‘violently shot’ bit was beyond him. It was about then that I lost the will to live. So I encouraged Todd to look up the word ‘targeted’ in the dictionary – something he instantly confused with his hip-hop client’s use of the term – and I left him to it.

You can only hope that the Recession has its benefits.

It’s taken all of a week perched on the eastern tip of the Australian coastline to realise that a decent holiday has little to do with location and everything to do with connectivity – or, to be precise, the lack of it.

With a small house, a beach at the end of the lane, two sandy-fingered children and no Internet access, my laptop was always destined to become a heavy-weight quill whist my Blackberry keyboard simply spent its time crunching away like a packet of crisps before finally giving up the ghost on day two. Having dusted myself off from a mild state of e-d-tox I began to relish my new found state of obscurity and settled down for a life that felt a little like the Waltons sur meare. The family was very impressed. I’m not sure the office felt the same.

Top of my relaxation list was to reacquaint myself with the age-old art of reading the daily newspaper from cover to cover. I shouldn’t have bothered. As one of the world’s most time-zone challenged countries, Australia gets much of its news 24 hours late. Not even events of global magnitude can find a way around that. The Tuesday Obama inauguration story was run in full on Thursday morning. Reading about it was a bit like plonking yourself down on a windswept beach only to be told that yesterday’s weather was simply glorious.

And what wasn’t redundant by time-zone, was redundant by content. The news from corporate Australia was grim. Forget those who tell you its better to sit out a business recession in the sunshine – gloomy news is gloomy news regardless of how sparkly the warm waters of the Australian coastline look.

And so my intellectual and educational default came from an increasingly battered copy of the weekend broadsheet – a publication so large, the children were able to make a tent, campsite, small fire and mock-up surrounding forest from it without me really noticing. What made it such a natural reference point was that it was a thousand pages of opinion and very little news. Which made for interesting reading indeed.

Since Mr Morse first started finger-tapping, media moguls have long realised that to be news, news has to be new. Facts have a habit of changing over short periods of time which is why being told something that is already out of date tends to niggle those who care. And most care.

Fast-forward to 2009 and the current crop of digital advocates continue to predict the death of the newspaper. Of course you only need look at decreasing advertising revenues to see that they have a point. But, for my money, it’s a false economy to assume print is on its last legs. Particularly weekend print.

Online forums may be the digital version of the opinion piece but I’m not entirely convinced such content is as accessible as your blogger on the Clapham Digibus would suggest. Fighting through the Sunday Cornflakes and spilt milk to boot up, search for the right web page, scroll to the appropriate article and expect the children to simply ignore me tapping away on the laptop is a nonsense. It would be red-rag chaos. Try the same process on the beach, and said laptop would soon be sized up as a spade. In the garden, the page would be invisible. In the bath, I’d be moments from death. etc etc. You get the point.

Not withstanding any future technical limitations what that probably means is that online will increasingly dominate the delivery of 24/7 news; TVs and radio will become PCs, albeit in the format of a familiar looking box so as not to offend the easily offended; specialist publications will run side by side with online user groups, each meeting the very particular needs of niche audiences; and weekend newspapers, brimming with a point of view, will flourish.

For the smart content provider that means having a toe in every camp and connecting them all through a single, trusted brand. ‘Monocle’ is a case in point: monthly magazine; live, weekly website broadcast; 24/7 web presence; retail outlet for branded goods; and linked column in the Weekend FT. All intelligent, connected opinion that stays consistent on content and provides its audience with access through a suite of channels that acknowledges the difference in audience access preference.

And so after a week on a beach with a young family and little connection with the modern world, I’m putting my ill-researched neck out and stating that the well formatted weekend newspaper is here to stay. That’s because opinion – well thought out and considered opinion – doesn’t really date over the course of a week. It matures, provokes debate and encourages a different point of view. It wallows in its analysis and if, quite frankly, that’s not enough to convince you the fact that it makes a great two-man tent must surely swing the vote in its favour.

For reasons superfluous to warrant explanation, I found myself strapped into the right hand seat of a remarkable slice of automotive genius early yesterday morning. And because I was in Sydney, rather than most of Europe or the US, that meant I had a steering wheel in front of me. Which made the experience all the more buttock tightening.

If you’re not a petrol head, which I’m not, the letter and number sequence, LP 560-4, will mean little to you. If, however, you know a thing or two about cars you will likely have goose bumps before you get to the end of this sentence. See.

The LP 560-4 is Italy’s contribution to contemporary art. If that sounds incongruous, it shouldn’t. Bolted onto the back of this particularly exquisite masterpiece is an engine with lots of impressive statistics, a four-wheel drive system that makes the stability of a mountain goat pale and more technical acronyms than our IT department would use in a week. But surrounding all of that is the most beautifully sculpted piece of pearl black carbon fibre you could possibly imagine – a crisp section of granite rock, nurtured into the form of a searing arrow by a man whose tool kit must have been comprised of silk, oil and feathers.

It is because of its form, not its purpose, that this car has so little to do with travelling from A to B. I defy anyone to walk up to it, open the door and slide into its seat. You don’t do that. It would be like giving the Pope a high-5. You walk around it. Slowly and with reverence. And you open the door with fingertip precision. For something that is apparently built around the principles of nuclear fission, this car is humbling before anything happens. It is reassuringly still.

Inside the cockpit (apparently, that’s what they call it) all is calm. There are two seats, a steering wheel and some foot peddles. All good so far. But underneath the discreet navigation screen to the left of the driver sit eight buttons, forged out of steel, in a neat single row. Two of them, when pressed in the right sequence, initiate something called thrust control. Another, slotted neatly next to the spot where you’d expect a gear stick to be says, CORSO. I refused to touch any of them.

Behind the steering wheel are two slim paddles. Neither activate the windscreen wipers or indicators. Both change gears. An important point when you’re about to turn left. Near your trembling right knee, tucked away in the dark folds of the leather dash, is a small round button that simply says, ‘Reverse’. Going backwards is discouraged.

So you get the picture. This is not your average motor. It’s not even your average Italian motor. This is something that demands eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead, no fumbling for the radio button when in motion and an absolute need to ignore the stirring sound track in the back of your head.

I drove the LP 560-4 for a full 60 minutes, through city streets and urban freeways, twisting roads and curling slip lanes. The sun was warming and the rush hour had yet to begin. It was mesmerising, exquisite, captivating and all the other incredibly over-used adjectives that you’d expect to hear. None of which do anything close to justice to the experience.

It is, instead, the closest thing you can get to controlled horizontal free-fall. The ultimate in forward projection in a very comfy seat (discounting anything with NASA stitched into the arm rest). It is an experience of contradiction too. Slo-mo and rapid-fire in a single moment. Detached from anything else on the road because it can make anything else disappear with the most delicate squeeze of the right foot. William Shatner would be impressed.

When the journey came to an end and I parked up, both the car and I breathed out. I felt liberated. I think she felt bored. I, the blushing schoolboy. She, the seasoned hooker. It was pathetically, gloriously rewarding and something that will stay with me for years to come. If I was religious, I’d move to Sant’Agata Bolgnese with immediate effect.

Of course, I am very well aware that this bloated, unpolished gush of autophilia goes against the very grain of this little blog of mine. And so, with purpose, I have since tried to find an analogy that neatly dovetails this experience into something, anything, justifiably communications or social trends related. But my best efforts have failed me. I simply can’t. And I’ve come to realise there’s little point in trying. So I’ll just say this.

If anyone, ever, gives you the opportunity to spend an hour in an LP 560-4, look them in the eye, take a deep breath and say, ‘Yes’. And if they don’t, find a (legal) way to make them. Good communications has its benefits.

Next week, Glass House services will return to normal. In the meantime, watch this.

It is blisteringly hot here in Sydney today. Scorched bare feet are causing millions to hop their way to the harbour foreshore in the New Year scramble for a vantage point to catch Sydney’s annual spectacle, the midnight firework extravaganza.

But despite perfect conditions for an evening of outdoor entertainment, there’s a hint of ‘last hurrah’ in the air. This is the first time in a generation when more people are reluctant to step into the new year than they are to stick about in the current. By all accounts, ‘Try to keep my job’ is currently topping the New Years Resolution list. You can hear the nerves rattling from Townsville in the north, all the way down the Australia’s eastern seaboard.

So, on the assumption that the more we know about the future, the less we have to fear it, here’s my top ten list of things to look forward to (or steer clear of) in 2009.

1. Integrity: those who have it will win. Those who don’t will die. Integrity in business will matter more this year than ever before. Smart, new companies will make a brand of it. And because most of us will end 2009 poorer than we started it, we’ll all be giving a lot more thought to deciding who deserves our hard earned cash.

2. Ingenuity: as companies big and small go to the wall, they’ll be a big appetite for new ideas and plenty of people who have the time to push their imagination. Look out for a business orientated R&D version of Facebook. If there are a million people willing to share pictures of their worst girlfriend on the net, there must be a million more looking for someone to spark some commercial inspiration.

3. Old Age: the older you are, the more popular you’ll be. With just about every industry you can think of having a reason to fear the worst in 2009, there’s one thing there’s not going to be a shortage of and that’s those with a bus pass. And it’s not just home help equipment manufacturers and medical device companies that are going to benefit. Because the majority of those in their sixties have just seen 50% of their live savings disappear down the credit-crunch plughole, the average age of our workforce is going to take a big jump up. That will impact everything from office politics to political office.

4. Infrastructure: on the day that Obama was elected, the Californian government quietly announced the introduction of a $100 million infrastructure package that will reinvigorate the use of rail travel in the state. Expect a fundamental shift in infrastructure and travel trends in 2009. When industry bailouts cost the taxpayer billions of dollars, a few hundred million all seems a bit of a drop in the ocean in the current climate. And whilst it will take a few years to come on stream, I’m predicting a resurgence in bicycle sales – both privately and to governments. The Parisian bicycle scheme, Velib, has proved such a success we should expect to see similar introductions in cities around the world. As for the general public, they’re saddling up will have little to do with the price of oil and everything to do with a greater sense of nostalgia when times are tough. Old style bicycles will make a come back.

5. Norway: two things will come out of Norway in 2009. Fiscal common sense and fresh, pragmatic design. The Finance Ministry’s ability to dodge the worst of the economic bullets is the envy of world leaders (with the exception of Gordon Brown who thinks he’s bullet proof). The generous applause is all about their stoic confidence and reserved air of absolute belief in getting the problem fixed. Norwegian pragmatism will be revered the world over. Brand Norway will also get a boost through the crisp styling and simplicity of its design students, bringing everything from clean lined furniture to svelte (which is not Norwegian for felt) clothing to our homes and wardrobes.

6. Celebrity: when the going gets tough, the tough start dreaming. And the American dream that one day the veil will come off the mundaneity of your every day life and you’ll be given a prime slot on the Letterman Show will be as buoyant as ever. As the recession bites, so the hopes of middle America that they’ll be blessed with some miraculous escape from financial oblivion will hit an all time high. Celebrity will be the biggest benefactor with those who’ve already hit the big time getting bigger and bigger. Paparazzi will go overboard. And national lotteries will have a boom year.

7. Quality: we’ll spend more on less. A craving for better things that last will pull the rug from under the feet of sectors of our disposable society and quality will be less dispensable. 2009 will be the year to start that carpentry business you’d always dreamed of.

8. Books: it’s also the year to write that book you’d always planned to write. With greater discretionary spending, we’ll be looking for maximum value for minimum cost. A book gives hours of entertainment at a relatively low cost. Having spent the past 5 years fretting over the power of the Internet, publishers could find themselves in for a bit of a boom time too if their product is right

9. Asia: the fact that the might of major Asian economies was still not enough to protect the rest of the world from the ravages of the economic downturn said little about their fragility and an awful lot about the depth and longevity of this crisis. But despite the slowdown, the majority of markets in Asia will remain on a growth curve, albeit less dramatic than expected by the Wall Street bulls 6 months ago. China will stay on track, Western confidence in India will slacken in the face of incremental tensions between it and Pakistan, and Vietnam and North Korea will emerge as the high-potentials of the emerging markets.

10. The Presidential Library: populating the G. W. Bush Presidential Library with suitable literature will be the year’s biggest online viral game. Searching for the right books that reflect the aptitude of the administration will give families across the US and beyond hours of fun, whilst offering the French the opportunity for political one-upmanship. Bush himself will retire to his new Dallas home followed everywhere by a unit of fearless security men, each especially trained in shoe-hostility manoeuvres. Look out for big sales of the Bush Boot in Australia – wind tunnel tested for greater accuracy when hurling at imposters.

Happy New Year!

Despite passing back into the hands of the Chinese in a fittingly symbolic ceremony that provoked a bout of public sobbing by Prince Charles, Hong Kong has continued to retain the air of an island of happy heterosexual capitalism amidst a becalmed sea of stoic, conservative socialism. But in the current economic climate, its bullish confidence is on the wane. You can see it in the posture of those who wander the Central district. They’ve stopped strutting. They pace, nervous and ill at ease.

It’s hardly surprising. The financial epicentre of Asia Pacific is smarting from the economic crisis like a punch drunk prizefighter unsure of where to swing next. Every day, The South Morning China Post reports of job losses with the solemn tone of national tragedy. A fortnight ago it was Citibank and HSBC. Next week it could be the journalists themselves.

These are strange times indeed. A couple of weeks ago I was in Hong Kong where (amongst other things) I attended the annual PR Awards extravaganza, an industry that is far from immune from the consequences of current market conditions. But in our particular world, the tension comes from an acute juxtaposition between the opportunity of a business revolution and the more immediate issue of commercial oblivion. The revolution is called digital adoption (rather than digital itself). Oblivion speaks for itself.

For a year or more now, some of the key players on Planet PR have been busy appointing digital gurus. These are the self-proclaimed experts whose remit is to wander, guru-like, across borders with a sublime confidence that stems from their ownership of a personalised lexicon of digi-terms and an apparent aversion to ties. Like your average GP, some are actually very good. Others are very good at confusing you.

Other firms understand that digital is in fact little more than another channel of communications, albeit an exciting one. Like the radio or the telephone or the television or the wireless or all the other communication devises that were amazing in their time, digital will contribute to the decision making journey. It won’t fundamentally change it. Which is why such firms are reluctant to guru-tise their digital offer and, instead, make it another thread to the increasing complex fabric of communications and advocacy creation into which they weave their efforts. Firms like mine.

The divide between digi-worship and channel-agnosticism was evident at the PRWeek Awards. New categories in which to celebrate online campaigns had been introduced and there was a hint of thou art sexier than I as the traditionalists looked on with the air of a veteran skier observing a snowboarder for the first time.

But of course there’s nothing particularly new about digital communication. Nor is this the time for those in the PR industry to be navel gazing about whose approach is better. It all matters now. In equal measure. It’s not about traditional or online communications. It is about inline communications. Getting, as one of my old bosses used to say, your proverbial ducks in a row.

Long the poorly dressed cousin to the curvaceous lust and powerhouse glamour that is (was) advertising, the PR industry has finally come of age. As client companies sniff out the means to maximise impact and exposure with a 30% budget reduction, PR firms are looking like a rather sexy alternative. It’s a surprise for some – a bit like the first time your best friend’s sister made you dribble rather than yawn. But it’s inevitable too.

The advent and adoption of digital has forced a rethink as to the influence and impact of those in the communications space. The public relations sector has as much claim on the outputs of the digital revolution as any other. It has forced the integration issue too, meaning the more progressive communications groups (to one of which, fortunately, I belong) have recognised that creativity is no longer king. The collective pursuit of evangelism is.

It is this industry reshuffle that has created a massive business opportunity for PR. Integrated or not, the PR sector has as good a reason to be at the forefront of the digital revolution as anyone else. If such PR firms are the vanguard of the revolution, then those that put creativity before advocacy will be the shocked troops of the bourgeoisie. Vive la révolution.

I might be on thin on ice here. Thin ice and blunt skates, in fact. But am I the only one who’s beginning to tire of the over-egged celebrity endorsement deals that have become less about pretty product shifting and more about light-weight policy pushing?

It’s not that I miss the point here – the point of a silver-screen hero flagging issues that really should matter more to an adoring public. Particularly if they’ve done just a little bit more than spend a day in an African refugee camp with a stylist and camera-crew. Nor am I going to deny the fact that there are a healthy number of A-listers who are serious about the business of peace, poverty and persecution.

But there’s an equal number who simply seem to be puffing mildly at the edges with half a mind on the issue at hand and the other half quietly calculating the reputational advantages of being serious for a moment.

Take Jude Law. Family man. Father. Nanny-lover. And, by all accounts, a generally well-intentioned chap. Which is probably why I choked on my cornflakes on seeing the headline, “Jude Law Calls for World Peace” slapped all over my morning .com site this week. Bad enough out of context. Worse in context – particularly when that context was a State of Emergency in Bangkok, Stalemate in Georgia and 67 Dead in Iraqi Bomb Blast.

At this point I’ll put the errant headline down to an over-zealous publicity agent hoping get some decent copy on how important something like a global amnesty is to his client and his cause – Peace One Day. But, please. Why, exactly, is that so significant? Who doesn’t want world peace? Let me rephrase that. Who in their right mind doesn’t want world peace? The Peace One Day initiative, and others of similar ilk, is steeped in good intention and the likes of Mr Law’s involvement will hopefully draw the right sort of attention to the cause. But to make a real difference, celebrity endorsement has got to be smart, targeted and pragmatic. Wishy-washy calls for the incredibly obvious don’t really do anyone much good, let alone Mr Law.

One father-to-be who could legitimately be crying out for a bit of peace right now is Levi Johnston. Not only did he realise the worst nightmare of every teenage male – getting his girlfriend up the duff – he did it on the most monumental of international of platforms, the US Presidential election campaign. One minute he was enjoying some extra-curricula activity in the relative obscurity of Alaska with the delightfully named Bristol Palin. The next his contraceptive glitch was headline news absolutely everywhere. Never has the metaphorical caught with your pants down been so unbelievably true. Embarrassment is too weak a word to describe it. Universal mortification is only marginally closer.

On the positive side, of course, Mr Johnston can look forward to a plethora of endorsement opportunities coming his way – future mother-in-law allowing. Which, to be frank, is about as likely as Jude Law achieving world peace. At least this weekend.

It’s the first thirty words that matter. Thirty words that create punchy, pithy sentences – a fine balance between fact, sentiment and relevance. Get this right and you’ll capture the imagination of your audience, inspiring them to read on. Get it wrong and you’re cast into the box called irrelevance, or worse, yawned at.

The Americans call it an elevator speech. Which presumably means the British call it a lift speech. And as a double entendre, that’s probably more valid. Because it is your opening statement that sets the agenda and its evident in more places than you might otherwise think. For example:

“Hello. My name Anna is and me and the boyfriend will to Austalia be coming soon. I like children and love play to with them. I care for them and be good big sister. I bake. And want my English to get better and willing am I to learn”.

“My name is Svet but my frinds call me Black. I am from a small town in north part of Norway. Its cold. I love lots of things and Bjork is my favourite singer. She’s cool. Maybe cold too. I like children too. And I bake”.

“Hi. My name is Natalie. I finished school last year and have since been working with disabled kids (2-3 years) in a kindergarten. I’m a big sports fan and coach a junior (6-10 years) tennis team at the weekend. I love the arts too and recently had the lead role in a local theatre play. I’d love the chance to become a part of your family. And I can bake too”!

So if you were in the market for an au pair, which one would tickle your fancy? Unless you run a language school, or happen to have a side business in the finer points of the occult, it’s not really a difficult decision is it.

For the past 4 weeks, I’ve been reading stuff like this every single day. Certainly not for the joy of it but to try to find someone, anyone, who sounds as if they could help keep the children out of mischief/ trouble/ hospital. Someone to help us in a country in which our only family is two young boys at that stage in life where destruction is the word of the day. Every day. Add to that the fact that we’ve previously had home-help and day care and nannies by the dozen, a revolving door of short-term love-a-thons – well, the time has finally come to raise our hands in defeat and say, “Help! Please. Somebody. Help!”

And so we entered the weird, parallel universe that is aupairworld.com. A place where the young and the not so young share their inner most hopes and dreams of packing up their bags and heading off to another country for 6 months to help a desperate family in need. A bit like a one-man UN peacekeeping force, minus the experience. Unless of course you count the baking.

This is the bit that intrigued me most about these online wannabe SuperNannies. Someone, somewhere has told them that they need to be able to bake. Not cook. Bake. Quite how they think arriving in Sydney with a battered copy of Mrs Beeton’s “Ladies in the Kitchen” is going to win them the favour of a 3 and 1 year old is beyond me. And it wasn’t just one or two of them. Even the gothic, Bjork loving, tongue stud wearing child-scarer from somewhere close to the Polar ice cap said she could bake. Bake what? Penguin Sponge Cake?

And then were those who confused a family-in-need with the find-a-mate pages of FaceBook. Girls who honestly thought a picture of them sporting a g-string and a pout was going to get them a 6-month family gig in Sydney. It’s what you might call audience mis-definition. A group of young ladies whose absolute failure to spend more than one second thinking about what an au pair-hunting family might be looking for, got them about one second of air time on the search-o-meter. If they had any brain cells between their attractive little ears, they could have given themselves half a chance by covering their most precious assets with a freshly baked fruit loaf at the very least.

At the beginning of the au pair hunt, we’d paw through every profile that came our way, reading and cross-referencing each and every word. But by day three, and 90 profiles later, boredom had set in and anyone who did not impress within 10 seconds was out. The problem with that is there’s probably a hidden gem out there, cast aside by us because her 3 years kindergarten, nursing and childcare experience was lost in a sea of irrelevant drivel about her father’s farmyard on the outskirts of Vienna.

At a time when a 3 second delay on a search engine is enough to get people in a huff and move on to another more responsive site, getting to your point has never been more important. Patience is a virtue that’s in danger of extinction. Even archaeologists are trading in their fox-hair brushes for the latest infrared scanning equipment. So here’s a simple tip, regardless of who’re trying to influence. And it’s really very simple. Think about who you’re trying to influence. Ask yourself what they want to hear. Say what they want to hear, in summary. Elaborate on each point. And summarise again.

Oh. And if there’s any aspiring au pairs out there looking for a job, I’m sorry say we’ve found ours. And she’s perfect. Strangely enough, it took us all of ten seconds to know that she was the one.