Thomas Cook vs lowcostholidays.com

Am I the only person on twitter who thinks that it sends out the wrong message? 

So by now, everyone’s heard the story of how poor young ‘Thomas Cook’ was bullied for sharing the same name as the holiday service provider and took to facebook to try and persuade them to give him a free holiday for his plight. Thomas Cook, quite sensibly said no but were then ‘given a lesson in social media’ by lowcostholidays.com who swooped in, like one of the heroic eagles in LOTR, to offer poor Thomas Cook a free holiday instead. And making it a whole week – instead of a weekend. Heavens, aren’t they generous, like a sun-tan-providing fairy Godmother?

It’s not that I don’t like the execution - I don’t like this because I think it promotes the wrong sort of behaviour. 

Some of you may have a similar story a few weeks ago. Where a young man (names Shane Bennett) wrote to Samsung asking for a free Samsung S3 and attached a drawing of a dinosaur. Samsung politely refused with the completely understandable logic of ‘if we gave everyone a Samsung for free we’d soon be out of business’ and craftily attached their own drawing of a kangaroo to ease the poor lad’s pain.

Good for them – they stuck by their morals (and business acumen). They still managed to go viral and people praised them for their understanding reply. Months later, after the many positive responses they received Samsung sent another letter to the young man thanking him for generating them some great PR and as a bonus – a Samsung case cover with his original drawing on it. One off, individual and original, but not likely to make them look like a pushover - a good balance.

I don’t doubt that Thomas Cook could have handled this current situation better and they should have taken full advantage of the opportunity there. I also don't doubt that lowcostholidays.com did a great job in assessing their social media market and have generated a fair amount of publicity.

But for one thing, how do we know that he is actually called Thomas Cook? Perhaps, like the runaway freight train that was the Chris Moyles ‘Toby Lerone’ feature that plagued many a tv/radio presenter, there will now be a spate of people tweeting nestle and claiming to be named ‘Amile Keeway’ or Viagra producers claiming to be named ‘Drew Peacock’ in the vein hope of free merch.

Lowcostholidays.com swooping in just seems a bit desperate - quick offer him a free holiday, love me, LOVE ME! It sends out the wrong message. It reminds me of when I was a waitress at a pub called ‘The George', we frequently got customers saying ‘My name’s George do I get free drink’ to which the answer was also a polite but resounding ‘no’. But hey, it worked for Thomas Cook. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to change my name to Aston Martin…


Added note: lowcostholidays.com had to withdraw an online ad campaign last year that asked viewers if they had even been 'Thomas Crooked' which is mentioned in the above article, they were legally obliged to pull the campaign for being defamatory and breaching ABTA's code of conduct.