What got people talking this week — 9 April

First published on O2’s FB Workplace on 9 April

1. Comedians to make you smile — there are some brilliant rising stars who have gained big social followings and are reacting quickly to cultural events. Two I wanted to share this week, as let’s face it, we can all do with as many laughs as possible at the moment:

• Luke Millington-Drake — visits Chipotle for a Burrito
• Lucia Keskin — leaked zoom meeting for Comic Relief

2. Building on their new Supermarket Mobile campaign, Tesco Mobile have launched a fun surprise & delight initiative for customers.

They’ll treat Tesco.com shoppers by subbing everyday grocery items with the latest mobile phones, tech and wearables. All you need to do is make a Click+Collect order and you could be one of ten lucky winners.

The ‘Super Subs’ include a brand-new Apple iPhone SE subbed for a bag of apples, a Samsung Galaxy S21 for a Galaxy chocolate bar, or even a Nokia 3.4 for gnocchi.

3. Stella Artois are going to tip UK hospitality staff £500,000 and have launched a new reopening campaign for pubs in advance of 12 April with the easing of lockdown restrictions.

Staff at pubs signed up to the campaign will be offered £1 for each pint of Stella they pull, which is a pretty good return!

A really great gesture given tips are a hugely important part of the job and something staff had to do without for most of the Covid-19 duration.

Celebrity publicans Jodie Kidd and James Blunt are also helping to raise awareness. James Blunt has avoided his usual humorous style on Twitter with a simple supportive post.

4. Aldi’s middle aisle has now gone virtual — if you don’t know, it’s essentially a random aisle full of home/garden products at cheap prices! This week, its product launch of an egg chair drove serious online search rankings and traffic for the brand. They bring it out same time every year and use product PR to build the hype.

It drove 200,000 people by 8am one morning and got a product ranking no.1 in days.

Their tactic was to reveal the date it would be online and a create a sense of urgency because “it will sell out”.

It’s essentially a drop. Think Supreme drops, where the hype is huge.

And although the online queue highlights that the egg chair has sold out, users don’t care! They want to wait to see what other bargains they can find. So, other products on Aldi’s site are benefiting as a result and Aldi’s site wide authority is benefitting.

Great insights via Carrie Rose from Rise at Seven on Twitter.

Bonus — looking for new influencers to follow? Cosmo magazine has unveiled The Positivity Index: 24 people (genuinely) making the world a better place. A great selection of potential influencers for us to work with too, alongside Milly Pickles who we collaborated with recently.