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Unless you were living under a rock last summer, you would have been aware of the London riots in August. Between the 6th and the 10th of August London was subjected a string of violent riots, resulting in looting and arson which tried to spread to other major cities across the UK using the power of Blackberry messenger, texting and the social network Twitter to organise the riots.
(Sourced from: http://www.facebook.com/buyabobbyabeer)
On August 4th 29 year
old Mark Duggan was shot dead by police in Tottenham after they attempted to
arrest him on suspicion of planning an armed attack. Due to anger surrounding
the circumstances of his death, Duggan’s family members and the local community
began a peaceful protest at Tottenham Police Station on the 6th of
August. This soon turned to violence and eventually led to the arson, looting
and rioting which spread across London.
Emergency
Services answered 2,169,999 calls relating to the riots, which is 15 times the
average number of calls. Before the end of the riots 16,000 police officers
were on the streets of London after Scotland Yard brought in officers from 12
other forces including Essex, Kent, Sussex and Cambridgeshire. London’s fire
brigade said it was the busiest time in terms of calls and response in recent
history.
So,
as I’m sure we were all very grateful for all their help, how did we decide to
say thank you? Of course, as the Brits we are, we got a round in.
London
based creative agency Addiction decided that they need to show their gratitude
to the Emergency Services. They set up a website and Facebook encouraging the
public to ‘pledge a pint’ saying thankyou to the boys (and girls) in blue. They
also got the hash tag #buyaboobbyabeer trending on Twitter to help traffic to
their campaign website. More than 20,000 visitors flooded the website and there
were more than 1,000 people bought the bobbies a beer.
Fuller’s,
one of Britain’s largest brewery chains, supported the idea and agreed to give
members of the emergency services a free drink in selected pubs from last
August. A total of more than £7,000 worth of drinks were given to emergency
service workers over the weekend.
Managing
partner at creative agency Addiction (anyone else notice the irony?), Jamie
Harvey said the company just wanted to say thanks to all the work the emergency
services do, and wanted them to have a drink on us, the people of Britain.
Just goes to show how social media can help
spread an idea across the nation. Next time you see a police officer, paramedic
or firemen get a round in. Probably best to wait until they are off duty
though…
For more information, visit; www.buyabobbyabeer.com
Author: Mollie Goodfellow
Social Media Frontiers – Client Manager
@MollieatSMF
Author: Mollie Goodfellow
Social Media Frontiers – Client Manager
@MollieatSMF
#buyabobbyabeer
Reviewed by Anonymous
on
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Rating: