It's not the new £20m ad campaign, which breaks this week, that is causing a stir at AOL headquarters, but the fact that the ISP's senior management has ordered a Stalin-esque purge of Connie, the brand icon who has appeared in countless TV ads since AOL arrived on these shores in the mid-90s.
Mix has learned that a diktat has gone out to all AOL staff to remove all traces of Connie, which includes cardboard cut-outs of the virtual model, pos-ters and other paraphernalia.
AOL's bosses feel the brand must move on from the virtual model, so future advertising activity will illustrate the lives of normal everyday people using the internet, rather than the straight-laced icon.
Mix, for one, isn't upset by this order. Connie is hardly offensive, but she is annoying. Time and again she has preached to viewers about the benefits of the internet in what can only be described as a patronising manner, and Mix can't help but feel that she has outlived her day.
Before any Connie fans out there get too distraught at the news that she is unlikely to grace our television screens again, rest assured that the cull is being done in as nice a way as possible.
Suggestions of a symbolic burning of all Connie material have been dismissed.
AOL's official company line is insistent that even though Connie won't exist for much longer, her 'brand values' remain.
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