After Lighting up Brentwood on Saturday, we are now clearly entering into the Christmas season of markets and Dickensian Fairs and whilst Brentwood’s lighting up event went smoothly, up in Cumbria, Ulverstone’s annual Dickensian Christmas Festival raised more than a few eyebrows following a potentially dodgy marketing gaffe.
In an effort to bring the Dickensian event into the 21st century, the organisers decided to add to their promotional effort by using on line marketing.
Unfortunately their Twitter account used the less than child friendly, hashtag of #dickfest.
Committee member and marketing boss for the event, Grant Huck, told Cumbria Live: “It’s an abbreviation! Short, sharp and memorable. It seems that Twitter users appreciate a more light-hearted approach to PR so I just thought it would get folk talking. It’s certainly worked. To be honest, I don’t know many people who don’t shorten it to Dick Fest in conversation anyway, so it was the logical choice,” he said.
One comment suggested that a “Social Media for Beginners course” might be advisable.
Now I guess that when we were at school, we might sometimes have been fearful of parent’s reaction to a bad report.
Well it seems that one enterprising youngster came up with an idea to divert attention elsewhere.
He wrote a letter to his dad saying that he had eloped with his pregnant girl friend to live in a trailer, grow and sell marijuana to other members of the commune.
He then added a PS which made it clear that what he’d written was in fact total nonsense intended to remind them that there are many things in life worse than the school report waiting on the kitchen table, and asking them to call him when it was safe to come home.
Full marks for that I’d say!
See you next time,
Scott
