By Malay Desai
From: USA, by 180 LA
Online travel company Expedia, to promote summer travelling, tapped on the nostalgia factor in its new interactive campaign. Titled #ThrowMeBack, it used the popular social media phenomenon of people recreating pictures that were taken many years ago. Its social media channels asked followers to post pictures they would like to recreate, every Thursday, calling it #ThrowBackThursday, throughout the summer. A select few were given air tickets for themselves and everyone in their picture to the destination where it was taken.
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Folks from the Los Angeles based biggie, please step forward and receive our midyear mention for outstanding work in the digital space. For an agency to have handled and created multilayered accounts such as Adidas, Pepsi and Mitsubishi, this would be among the simplest of ideas, and yet it strikes a universal chord.
Recreating polaroid pictures with your folks isn’t a new phenomenon, but it surely got a boost with the advent of social media. Almost every week or so, you will definitely stumble upon someone having recreated their childhood picture with friends, family or simply alone in front of their homes. The charm of the matter is, even if you and your folks have become older, fatter, lost hair or have a baby or two, the recreated pictures will still carry emotional magic. Sift through any of those on your timeline, and you’d have a smile on your face. Expedia just tapped into an already happy place.
The concept was out there, it needed no explaining. Everyone young on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter knows what a throwback photo is, and nobody among them would mind a paid holiday to recreate this. In the US where grown children stay miles away from their parents, there is the added factor of reunion, which makes for a sentimental film to flaunt.
The campaign was executed smoothly, and is in fact still active. Run a search of the hashtag #ThrowBackThursday on Twitter or Instagram and you’d see entries by the dozen. Of course it helps that Expedia already has thousands of followers on its properties, and a good idea simply becomes great thanks to virality.
Running right through September, the campaign will see Expedia pick up a winner every week and treat them to a voucher which – surprise surprise – can be claimed only on Expedia. Also, we won’t be shocked to know the winning entries are to summer destinations, as the whole point is to promote travelling in the summer.
Digital agencies brainstorming on how to use ‘selfies’ as an interactive tool, look beyond, there’s much more going on in our Reddits, Facebooks and Instagrams.
To watch this film on your desktop, type in ‘bit.ly/ViewTubeAug11’
