Friday 15 December 2006

'Puffins are not baby Penguins' says Puffin marketing officer Justin Renard, who also says he's been in his job for nine months. The Penguin Blog is a striking exemplar of an interesting phenomenon, as corporations attempt to make themselves into user-friendly entities and "engage" more meaningfully with customers. I read it regularly, just to get an idea of the different characters who inhabit the offices of this spectacularly successful publishing concern.

Apparently Puffin, which was born in 1940 as the children's imprint of the company founded by Allen Lane, will turn 70 in 2010. Renard is one of the employees charged with the task of making the milestone a memorable, and of course profitable, one.

So I open the question to you. What does Puffin mean to you? What do people remember? Cherish? Judge? Criticise? And what would you like to see us do in 2010? Afterall, like Penguin, Puffin is not a brand that just sits there idly on the shelf. It is a part of us all. Or is it? What say you? And who knows, we might even pilfer your ideas.

So far there is one comment. Claire of blog Sit-Down-Comedian cherishes her memories of the books that emerged from the presses put into motion by the founders of the imprint.

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