Relax, I am not trying to create even more alarmism by suggesting there is a relation between the two diseases; they just happened to be the hot topics of the past 24 hours… quite an eventful day!!

The day started with a number of silly headlines about the potential pandemic of the Gripe Porcino (to call it a la Mexicana) and luckily also some sensible voices (check out Simon Jenkins pointing out we have gone demented… indeed we have!), then went on with the clearing of my inbox of ‘I feel sorry for your business’ and ‘maybe we should cancel our trip’ messages and with a phone call with my mother in which I had to promise I will not be crossing the Atlantic anytime soon. Finally, after checking on a few friends in Mexico, I saw they are far more relaxed about the whole thing than us here, but now we are going into genetics, so that does not count

Cancer, on the other end, is killing far more people than the Swine Flu and it is already a real pandemic to which no one seems to be immune regardless of the age, race, life style and sneezing habits (either in a tissue or to the neighbour’s face). Which is why we should keep ourselves as fit and healthy as possible and grab any chance we have to support the research. And here (finally) comes the link to yesterday’s event;  another exciting London Bloggers Meetup sponsored by Fashion Targets Breast Cancer a charity established in 1990 by Ralph Lauren which has raised over £9m for Breakthrough Breast Cancer.

I must admit I am particularly sensible to breast cancer due to my family history; plus, by coincidence I had my first BC screening a few hours before the meetup (I am getting to that venerable age when they start keeping an eye on you…) but I am not particularly into fashion. However, I was very impressed by the web-marketing and social media techniques this charity has been using to communicate with the public and to get young people involved into its cause. Its main campaign - Million Model Catwalk - uses a very fresh and fun approach to both fundraising and raising awareness.

At the event they did not just offer drinks and canapes, but USB keys full of information, website urls, facebook and twitter accounts… and organised raffles with their fashion items as prizes (I won a lovely t-shirt, and I am certainly considering buying some more stuff to support the cause). Today the PR girls sent follow up messages to the meetup members and got an amazing feedback. There were hash tagged twits (#1mmc) like the one I sent last night, blog posts (like this) and comments on their own blog, all techniques charities should learn and take advantage of! Well done!