Thomas Cook, April Fool, and the problem with being so beautiful
As you gorge on chocolate Easter eggs this weekend, take a look at what’s been going on in the online world this past week.
Happy Easter.
Following its current Facebook competition to win a £20,000 holiday, Thomas Cook has revealed it has big social media plans for the remainder of the year. Michael Johnson, the company’s UK & Ireland marketing director, has hailed social media as a "subtle" way of driving engagement with consumers. Using their current ‘It’s a wonderful world. Explore it with us’ message, part of the campaign will include a video of their staff lip-syncing to the Joey Ramone track ‘Wonderful World’ which will be posted to their YouTube channel, so stay tuned.
Last weekend saw the annual celebration for pranksters that is April Fool’s Day. Lots of brands got in on the action, here’s our pick of the bunch: Virgin Holidays announced the launch of a new currency ‘The Branson’ which was to be used at all of their destination resorts; Cadbury unveiled a new variety of its Bubbly chocolate bar containing helium that actually floats; and car manufacturer Peugeot revealed a new paintwork that changes colour according to the driver’s emotion.
Home of the flat-pack, Ikea, has launched a new Facebook competition entitled ‘Snap a napper’. Open only to its 1.3 million ‘Family’ loyalty scheme members, they are encouraged to take humorous photos of friends and family falling asleep in a bid to win a new bed and everything they need for a ‘perfect night’s sleep’.
And finally, after this week almost everyone knows the name ‘Samantha Brick’, but not for the reasons she envisages. The Daily Mail ran an article by the writer about the downsides of being beautiful, which was met with an enormous online backlash. After telling her story of constant attention and lavish gifts from men and jealousy from threatened women she immediately became a trending topic on Twitter. In just one day the online article received more than 1.5million hits, over 8,000 comments, was shared almost 50,000 times on Facebook and was second in the list of most talked about topics on Twitter – with the vast majority of mentions referring to her delusions of grandeur. In a follow up article Brick said that this reaction just confirms her point that people are simply jealous of her looks.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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