A Cut Above
There’s nothing that HMV’s head of press and PR Gennaro Castaldo won’t do in the call of duty. He works ridiculously long hours, deals with an at times rabid press and vicious business reporters, puts up with numerous queries and pointless complaints from members of the public, has to deal with uppity talent and that’s just for starters. But his latest wheeze really does go above and beyond. For Castaldo was put through the ritual humiliation of having his head shaved in front of pointing, giggling members of the public in the window of HMV’s flagship 150 Oxford Street store. It was all for HMV’s chosen charity Teenage Cancer Trust and was timed to tie in with the release of Lionsgate’s 50/50, a film that manages to draw plentiful laughs out of cancer and having to shave your head as part of chemotherapy treatment. Castaldo joined HMV staffers, bloggers and journalists and others raising cash by having their hair shorn on the day of the film’s release. The event raised something like £3,500 for the charity and further helped promote the film’s release. Castaldo said: “On behalf of the participating ‘hmv shavees’, we’d like to say how very happy we were to take part in the 50/50 Challenge by way of supporting Teenage Cancer Trust as well as the release of 50/50 on DVD and Blu-ray – which is a great film and we hope does really well. We’d like to thank all the kind individuals and organisations who supported this event with their donations and best wishes – not least Nicola Pearcey and all at Lionsgate, Danilo, Brunswick, v3 and Aiken PR for their particularly generous contributions, as well as Mike Hird at Premier PR, How at Electric Hair and our colleagues at HMV including Jane Shaw, Harvey and the team at hmv Oxford Street. If you include gift aid it looks like we’re on course to raise the best part of £3,500, which is a fantastic result. We may have had a lot of fun doing this, but, of course, there was a much more serious point behind this – namely to highlight and support the wonderful work of HMV’s nominated charity - Teenage Cancer Trust, which does so much to help teenagers and young adults with cancer – and we’d like to thank Lucy Ward there for her help with this event. Many sincere thanks once again to everyone that supported us in the 50/50 Challenge – we really appreciate it.”
Lionsgate’s Kaz Mills added: “”It was such a pleasure to be involved in the 50/50 Challenge. We are delighted with the amount of money raised for the Teenage Cancer Trust – and so happy we were able to help create a charitable event like this in conjunction with our film release. Massive congratulations need to go to the brave HMV volunteers who not only consented to having their heads shaved, but were also daring enough to lose their locks in front of the London public! So respect to HMV – and thank you to Premier PR for organising such a fantastic, unique and totally commendable event.”
