Daily Archives: September 30, 2006

Webcameron

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Ye Gods! And there’s poor ol’ Gordon Brown thinking he’s hip because he’s got an iPod. Not only does Dave ‘Vote Blue to get Green’ Cameron have a wind turbine and solar panels but how he has a video Blog. It’s called Webcameron, naturally. I’ve just watched his first post — shot in his kitchen with kids shouting and scenes of general domestic chaos. The man’s a genius — at PR.

Later… The semiotics of the first video post are interesting. For example:

  • Cameron is shown in his kitchen, washing up. [Message: I’m a ‘new man’.]
  • There are kids squealing for his attention in the back ground. One of them wants Daddy to wash his hands. Daddy leans down tenderly and says he will do it in a minute when he’s finished this video thing. [Message: I’m a caring Dad who’s got the work-life balance right.]
  • He squirts some washing-up liquid onto the dishes. It’s Ecover — an environmentally-friendly brand, not some nasty chemical stuff. [Message: I’m as green as they come.]
  • We are given a glimpse beyond the kitchen where a baby sits happily in a high chair. In between Dave and the baby is what looks suspiciously like a clothes-horse with some garments airing on it. The scene is of agreeable domestic chaos. [Message: I may be Party Leader and the next Prime Minister, but really I’m just like you.]

    The more I looked at the post, the more inspired it seemed as a piece of PR.

    • Hewlett-Packard’s new service contract

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    From today’s New York Times…

    Other documents provided to Congressional investigators revealed that Hewlett-Packard was billed a total of $325,641.65 for various services related to the leak investigation’s second phase from January to April. That included $83,597.42 for surveillance, which was described as “Multiple Surv. And Sting Activity Palo Alto, Piedmont, SF, LA, CA & Denver CO.” A parenthetical note clarifies that the surveillance included “trash re-con of all areas.”

    Background investigations on several board members and their relatives, as well as reporters for The Wall Street Journal and the online service CNet, did not come cheap. The bill was $66,688. There were also background checks on employees of Hewlett-Packard’s media relations department, costing $6,435. And locating, identifying, charting and cataloguing records of interested parties — the part of the investigation that apparently included pretexting — cost $44,875.

    Invoices from the Action Research Group, the Florida company that is reported to have arranged the pretexting, are also among the more than 100 documents obtained by Congressional investigators. Many of them run in the vicinity of $100, but a 2005 invoice for call records of Carleton S. Fiorina, around the time of her dismissal as chairwoman and chief executive, shows a price tag of $500. The invoices conclude with the line “Thank you for using our services!!!”, all in capital letters, followed by a black-and-white rendition of Hello Kitty, a popular Japanese cartoon character.

    Footnote: “trash re-con” is not a reference to the icon on the Windows desktop.