Its time to say farewell to Penny, she joined Connected in 2009 as Acting Head of Social and Content, after a long history in the User Generated Content world – running blog sites, forums and social campaigns for more than 15 years. She’s a heavyweight pro and we’ll really miss her around the place.
Born in Yorkshire, Penny brought a mischievous sense of adventure to the team and through her outgoing personality she inspired many of the team to start writing and being more engaged with the social media sphere.
In touch with a younger digital generation, she was a very early adopter on all the major (and minor) social channels – getting on Facebook in late 2006 – and then went onto start a 500k member group in the health space. She has tens of thousands of friends and followers across the globe.
But Penny isn’t real.
She’s a cover story, an umbrella, a nom-de-plume used by us since we first stepped into the UGC world of social back in 2002. Initially we used a pretty random name, on behalf of a client, to process social queries.
But Penny soon grew into a personality, soon took on an identity of her own. Folks would ask for her, and respect her opinion so in 2009 we “brought her to life” properly and hired her, actually we head-hunted her from a client going bust if you read the bumpf at the time. She always had an expiry date, she was created to kickstart campaigns, social content and discussions. She was kindling, a catalyst, and a firestarter.
After more than a decade, Facebook finally called her out. The Californian giant wanted proof she was a real person – oops – so we killed her off, quietly. No fanfare, no funeral, after 16 years just this short eulogy.
“Farewell Penny, you touched the lives of countless souls.
You made them think, you made them share
You stopped the fights, but you paid the price
May you digitally rest in peace”
RIP Penny Driscoll, MIA April 2018
