Twendsetters

As Monday morning dawned in the office this week we had confirmation that there were funds for us to use for a digital promotion.

After a giddy half hour getting excited about breaking boundaries and being innovative we sat down to work out our timelines. The ‘project’ would be to warm people up to visiting Blackpool for the Easter holidays (not forgetting the rest of our lovely area and the months between Easter and Summer). Easter school holidays start on 26 March so we needed to get the campaign going by March 1.

Realisation dawned.
We needed to get an agency appointed within the week. How to go about doing this? How to find a switched on, social media savvy, hungry agency?

Simples.

Tweet it.

So we did.

As a sort of dating advert format.

And as one agency said to us on a tweet –‘@touristboard First Twender I’ve seen. Brilliant and scary at the same time. Blink and you miss it.’

We also took a chance and sent the information to the guys that run the excellent How-Do website. They kindly published it as a news item. Brilliant, I thought, now we have a chance of getting some great agencies prepared to get creative in a really really short space of time.

They were. Alot of them. In fact 43.

So my allocated time of 4 hours to shortlist and draw up a brief for the shortlist pitch on Monday became REALLY intense. Especially as many agencies supplemented the 1 page submission document with HUGE amounts of supporting documentation.

I made it by 4.20pm – calming the awaiting agencies with an interim tweet. My shortlist is 5. We are all really excited as one of these agencies are going to produce the goods for us in a BIG way. I’m looking forward to Monday; but not looking forward to choosing between them.

And guess what?

We’re going to announce the winning agency with a tweet – not a phone call.

Sarah Lundy