Me

It never really quite caught on as the ideal product name: "Windows Me." It was the software so adaptable to the needs of individuals in the 21st century that Microsoft wanted everybody to pronounce it as a word rhyming with "twee", rather than initials standing for "Millennium Edition". But I've yet to find anyone who calls the program version I'm using by its proper name, and thanks to Silicon Valley's unquenchable thirst for the next new thing, it's a name that will soon be forgotten anyway with a replacement for its successor Windows XP supposedly due for launch sometime soon. Perhaps Bill Gates got it wrong and people were chronically fatigued at seeing a post-viral software package which always makes me think of a rather unpleasant medical syndrome called Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.

Launches and re-launches. The marketing and ad man's stock in trade. If brevity is the soul of wit, there's often little evidence of wit in the torrents of words gushing "new"" every year from the men and women who invest giga-loads of cash in trying to convince us of the virtues and value of their product, whatever it may be.

Even the humble potato crisp is not immune to the attentions of the marketers. Britain's leading brand has just been foil-wrapped in stylish noughties garb with a new logo and unashamedly chanting the lower fat mantra. Gary Lineker's paymasters no doubt decided to change their image before some nanny in the Food Standards Agency tries to ban us from eating these savoury delights altogether.

Everybody likes a makeover once in a while. It helps to re-vitalise our sometimes drab lives and give new value to the best qualities of old favourites. And it can work as well for the person as for the product, the idea as much as the tangible. But it needs to be done with care and caution, lest we throw out the baby with the bathwater.

This blogspot is, I feel, due for a re-launch. The dis-interested advice of trusted friends has made me realise that my words are not always working for their readers or for me as well as I had intended. Anyway has become far more than I ever imagined it would for me when I first wrote some comments on the Athens Olympics eighteen months ago, and it's been a pleasure to post.
But, just as munching rather too many potato crisps in the past has caused me to pile on the pounds to the extent I've now re-launched my diet, I'd like my first web presence to have less verbal calories and to put more cerebral nutrition into what I do write.

You, dear reader, can be part of my focus group and, no, I am not asking you to pile into a Ford family car to do so. Just hit the "comments" button instead or, if you know me, send an e. Henry Ford may have been a genius in some respects, but he made a big mistake when he tried to limit his buyers to just one colour, black.

Life is neither black, nor white, and its expression can and should come in many colours too. I'm currently on a mission to "sell" my own best points as I seek a new occupational direction, possibly a vocation even, and trimming down the portly forty-something figure is just one aspect of it. But the wisest marketer knows that some things never change and word of mouth can be far more powerful than words of flannel. Google has become the world's most influential company by little else.
The most important launch and re-launch in history happened with little ceremony and unpromising beginnings in a small country in the Middle East at the beginning of the first millennium. Unknown celebrities from afar took two years to reach the launch but knew it was the most important journey they'd ever make. 33 years later the young man they'd come to see was re-branded a blasphemous criminal and given the most excrutiating, humiliating punishment possible at the time. Despite the love and attentions of his backers of three years, his future seemed as hopeless as a well-regarded slimming product did when their name started to sound like a fatal illness. He died.

But the maker of this product knew what he was doing from the beginning. Had he relied on his focus group to fulfil his marketing plan, he would have given up the ghost long ago, just like his own son did when he hung on a cross on the first Good Friday.
Unlikely as it seemed, the death of the old was crucial to the birth of the new. And only this man could then -and still does- point the way to life which makes no false claims, but can be lived to the full with no artificial additives. Its a high-risk strategy, but for millions of believers around the world it's the answer to life, the universe and everything. You'll never find a finer "brand" than the name of Jesus and indeed, if you believe what it says on the "packet" called the Holy Bible, then one day every knee shall bow in his presence. Any way you say it, JC is the name for me.