Here's a story to warm the cockles of one's heart, and don't we all
need a strong dose of feel-good tonic in these days of anthrax and other
nasty scares.
So what if the story has a commercial side to it, at least it's an
attempt to encourage young ones to read. Here goes: just about everyone
has probably heard about Harry Potter, the blockbuster from J. K.
Rowlings, which is now a movie with sponsorship rights belonging to
Coca-Cola. Coke is leveraging on this and has roped in its business
partners, including M&C Saatchi Singapore chief executive Huw Griffith,
to read to kids in its 'Magic of reading' tour.
Diary hears Griffith has become something of a hit with his young
audience.
"The kids just went crazy for Huw," gushes Kate Bristow, M&C's strategy
planning chief. Griffith's even ended up on the nightly news.
What's Griffith's secret? Maybe it's the many client presentations he's
been to - after all, don't client storyboards look like pages from a
kid's story book. That and one other similarity, says Bristow. "All the
kids get so excited and were putting up their hands wanting to speak to
Huw.
I've been to client meetings which is also a bit like that."