At least, you’re not the only ones!
Your town of Pagosa Springs — I’ve learned, from reading Daily Post Editor Bill Hudson’s editorial series on “Becoming an Authentic Community” — was ‘rebranded’ back in about 2010.
Well… the nation of Turkey was just rebranded, with an entirely new name.
As of this past December, Turkey is now ‘Turkiye.’ Recep Erdogan, that nation’s president, said, in a circular, that “the phrase Turkiye represents and expresses the culture, civilization and values of the Turkish nation in the best way.” Well… if he says so. Because who can argue with a President Erdogan sort of guy, about rebranding, or just about anything else, for that matter.
If you search his name online, you get articles, like one in a 2019 issue of a major magazine, noting “the new depths of Erdogan’s autocracy.” And you find out that “Turkey’s president can no longer bear to lose at the ballot box.” Doesn’t that sound, an awful lot, like a now ex-president of a country some 6,300 miles from Turkiye?
But anyway, like Pagosa Springs, Turkiye – previously known as Turkey – has a tourism group that, along with President Erdogan, might have played a key role in the rebranding initiative. As a matter of fact, the tourism team already has rebranded the nation’s website, which now is “goturkiye.com. But my computer doesn’t seem to have caught up, yet, with the new name. I’m getting that squiggly red line under Turkiye, every time I type the new brand name.
Some other unusual goings-on, have been going on, also recently.
“A British energy supplier” had to apologize for some “poorly judged and unhelpful” advice to customers, according to an article in CNN. The energy supplier suggested that customers “could snuggle up to their pets and exercise to cut back on their heating bills.”
Now, before you start thinking what’s so bad about snuggling up with a pet, here’s the thing… The energy crisis is pretty serious and difficult for the company’s customers, and suggesting snuggling up to be warm, or some other things the company proposed, such as “eating bowls of oatmeal and doing star jumps” — (more on that, in a second, I had to look up ‘star jumps’) — just wasn’t cutting it.
‘Plyometric moves,’ by the way, that’s what ‘star jumps’ are… in other words, propelling one’s body off the ground. But what if you’re not built for that sort of thing, and you’re not an oatmeal eater?
Well… the company wound up issuing one of those mea culpas, which, let me tell you, having been in the PR business, companies sure don’t want to have to do…
“We are working hard to find meaningful solutions as we approach this energy crisis,” said a spokesperson.
And – my bad! – there’s just no other way to say the next thing I’m about to mention. There was a CNN Business story, in the news roundup on my phone, that I wanted to email to myself, so I’d have it on my PC, where I do my writing. As I’m about to email me, my phone tells me I have nothing in the email’s ‘subject’ line, so thinking I’d better come up with something, the first thing, flashing in my mind, is ‘f’ers.’ Maybe because the story involves Fox TV?
It was about a “right-wing talk show host who throughout his career has courted controversy with incendiary commentary,” who will now be hosting Fox’s 7pm program.
Jesse Watters, the newly-appointed host, according to the story, “cements a strategy Fox initiated soon after President Donald Trump lost re-election: More right-wing commentary, less news.”
But even though Mr. Watters is described as a “flame-thrower,” he oddly enough, had one of those standard, sort of off-the-shelf PR comments about his new assignment, about being “thrilled to take on this new challenge,” and being “grateful for the opportunity.”
Even flame-throwers, apparently, have to play PR games, sometimes, I suppose.