I would like to ask How-Do readers this week to come to the aid of MRSA. I feel it’s had a bad press of late. There has been far too much emphasis on the “bug” aspect of its identity and very little on the “super” appellation that prefixes the name of the preferred mode of “bed release” in many of our cash-strapped infirmaries.

Being but a humble toiler in the groves of Asian academe, obviously I don’t have the cash to fund a cure nor any serious investigation into palliative treatment. However, I am willing to invest 100 RMB (about ₤ 6.50 to you chief!) in a brand strategy for this oft maligned bacterium from the Staphylococcus aureus family.

I would ask interested agencies to submit their proposals for countering the now ingrained negative perception of MRSA no later than November 6th.

Scenes such as this are probably being re-played endlessly within the area as the grateful local populace learns of the long-awaited arrival of a crack-team of corporate re-branders…

Barry: Kev! Kev! Have you heard! It’s all over. The City Council has caved in to our demands. We’re going to get that re-branding marque that we’ve all dreamed of…
Kev: Is it true Barry? It’s really all over? We’re going to get a locally-based hearts and minds campaign that actively reassures us that we don’t really live in a shit hole?
Barry: More than that Kev! Much more than that! They’ve agreed it’s going to being a fetching blend of pastels designed to reflect urban regeneration and the resurgence of a community-based “can-do” ethos!
Kev: (wiping a tear from his eye). That I should have lived to see this day…

Now I take this kind of shit personally. I don’t really care if Wilmslow wants to indulge in a high profile campaign introducing a special four wheel drive only lane where its cycle paths used to be. Nor do I care if Alderley Edge wishes to commission Mike Oldfield to pen a celebratory song cycle to launch its new generation of street lighting, however this kind of bollocks is an insult to the people of Wythenshawe.

My family followed a fairly well trod path for Irish émigré Catholics – arrive and settle in Liverpool at the end of the nineteenth century, migrate to Wythenshawe in the first quarter of the 20th Century, then move to Wythenshawe’s leafier neighbours (in my family’s case to Timperley, admittedly by way of Partington (but hey we all make mistakes!)) when they’d got a bit of cash.

I spent a lot of my childhood in Wythenshawe, both in some of the nicer bits and in the hell hole that was Benchhill. Why I even went to school in neighbouring Sharston, where I shared a biology group with Professor Johnny Marr of the Smiths and latterly Salford University.

This £30k will be of no benefit to the people of the area. Any agency that takes the money is depriving some low-income family of damp-proofing, some cash-strapped OAPs of central heating or a neighbourhood school of text books.

Any agency that accepts this brief should be treated as a pariah.

However, there are many agencies that have roots in the area. Should any of them feel compelled to put something back in on a gratis basis then that would be quite a different matter. It might not achieve much for the people of the area but at least it won’t deprive them of anything either. And, who knows, you might even win an award for it – it’s the kind of shit that does, after all.

Now if MRSA was seeking a PR consultancy to remedy its image problems rather than a design company, then what would be the proposed strategy?

Say MRSA’s press coverage had been rather bleak of late? Say many people felt it had not been quite so effective as a patient-centric pestilence since dropping its original Holby Mange name in favour of a more nebulous acronym-based identity? Say it had suffered as a result of a number of variant strains setting up on their own and claiming to be much more lethal and harder to treat? What then would a PR consultant recommend for our favourite ward-related exit mode of choice?

Why, it’s obvious. MRSA would have to issue a press release re-asserting its potency as THE terminal infection to be seen dead with this season. Something such as: “MRSA kills absolutely everyone stone dead in a hospital in Penrith in about a minute” or “MRSA claims its biggest death toll ever and it now gives you bigger and more unsightly buboes than ever before, honest guv!” These press releases would have to be a little light on details on timing of the actual events, and on just how many deaths could in reality be attributed to other members of the Staphylococcus family, but, hey, who checks these things?

On to entirely unrelated issues and congratulations to both BDH and Communique who have both reported their biggest ever wins this week with new business from BP and the NHS respectively. Well done all round.

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