Tempori Parendum – We move with the times, High School of Stirling
Yes, the media world is changing very quickly, the web and new mobile technology allows communications channels that no-one foresaw at the start of last year’s Michelmas term. Shocks aplenty, as last year’s head boy has hooked up with the school gossip, which just goes to show, anything’s possible. As leader in communications and with plenty of other schools judging PR College on our exam results, we have to constantly be revising the curriculum - only the fleet footed will survive, and we don’t want parents sending their kids down the road at the Advertising Academy do we?

Esse Quam Videri – To be, rather than to seem to be, Southampton Grammar School
This term, the web is the most transparent media we’ve got – even better than that acrylic lying around the DT lab. However, too many students are still apparently unaware that the whole school internet is rigged with clever CCTV stuff and if you go around making impersonations, or playing on the astroturf without permission, you will get caught – and made to write 1000 lines apology updates on Twitter.

Ut Voce Ita Vita– As with your voice, so with your life, Exeter Cathedral School
Memo for the teachers at PR College – it’s all very well telling your clients students to get involved in this social media malarkey, but if you’re not doing it yourself, what kind of a role model are you? (Disclaimer – this was my prep school)

Audi et Aude– Learn and Dare, Ravenscroft School
I fear too many of the summer term’s projects have been plagiarised or simply re-used versions of previous campaigns. Where’s the ambition in you? This year I’d like to see more daring projects, stuff that hasn’t been done before, that’s going to keep our students excited and interested, and coming back for more lessons and after school activities. I suggest field trips to art galleries, musical concerts and the theatre to revive your creative minds.

Provida Futuri – Mindful of the future, Pitzer College, California
Maybe it’s that Usain Bolt guy making it popular, but sprinting was oversubscribed this summer. On the other hand, our cross country running team has a few very keen & successful members that need supporting with all the help we can give them. Students need to know that it’s not how fast you run, it’s how far. A good sprint today may be forgotten about next week, but distance runners prove their worth and show real commitment to the sport. (If that makes no sense, read this)

Ex antiquis et novissimis optima – The best out of the old and the new, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
Ok, we all love ICT lessons, and playing around with the new gym equipment. But our library is one of the most well stocked in the country, and many people still love libraries. The web is great and allows us to really thrive as a school, but it’s not all about Twitter and all her friends. It’s our job to ensure that clients students get the best programme that fulfils their objectives and turns them into rounded brands individuals. The newspapers still matter, TV still matters. They may be in decline, and social media may be on the up, and while there are 19m active users of Facebook in the UK, that means there are 40m people that don’t use it.

Best of luck, looking forward to a great year.

Lewis Webb

Head of Year 7

First off is the advert that’s being aired in cinemas: A whistlestop trip around the globe showing how lovely the world would be if only we could hug and kiss each other instead of paying for things – a sort of kindness economy if you will. Trouble is, that in a time of global recession, suggesting that everything would be better if only money didn’t exist is twee, naive and unreasonable as a central concept of a marketing campaign. What’s more, it’s not a concept that Absolut (owned by Pernod Ricard, a company making annual sales of €6.6bn) subscribes to. Absolut sold around 100m litres of Vodka in 2008, I’m sure that they’d prefer £16 for a bottle rather than a kiss on the cheek (not to mention their shareholders).

Secondly, the week long series of events and giveaways, where people could exchange acts of kindness for goods (fruit, coffee, cocktails – although I’ve seen many a girl get free drinks in exchange for their number or a discreet snog). The website proudly reported that “Early morning coffee seekers who were extra kind to the barista staff were rewarded with lattes, cappuccinos and a few healthy teas. Smiles, winks, loud ‘good mornings’, lots of compliments and laughs demonstrate just how kind Londoners can be.” Yes we can be kind, if we’re getting something for free.

What Absolut don’t tell us is how the vendors were coaxed into taking part. For example, the Berwick St market traders aren’t operating on Pernod Ricard finances. My hunch is that they were sponsored by Absolut to get involved – meaning that the pashminas and grapefruits were paid for in the first place – in essence making the “acts of  kindness” superfluous to the entire economy of it all – or, by Absolut’s logic meaning they’ve been paid for twice… odd.

Finally, visitors to the website are asked the question: In an Absolut World you could acquire whatever you desire as long as you’re prepared to pay in kindness. That puts a slight spin on value. So, how would you measure value? What would you buy and how would you pay for it? 

Unfortunately, most visitors didn’t really get the question and came up with gems such as:

• I wish I can live in a world of kindness. No money, no worries , no robbery just kindness. What a wonderful life…..  (Obviously not read Hobbes’ Leviathan)
  
• I would rebuild New Orleans and retire on a farm. (You’ll have to be REALLY kind to rebuild a city)
  
• If kindness were currency I’d pay for everyone around the world to have expensive cancer drugs that they can’t currently get. I’d do anything for that. I’d even be kind to spiders by giving them flies to eat, and not screaming loudly when I see them and not dusting away their webs. (Sure, let’s ask drugs companies to give away years of R&D in exchange for Polly being nice to spiders, “Hold please….” )
  
• I would buy enough chocolate for everyone and distribute it when it was needed (You’d buy chocolate? with money? isn’t that against the rules?)

Well thanks Absolut for providing us with some amusement, but please stick to marketing campaigns that don’t patronise us or try to turn us into hippies – it doesn’t suit you.