1 thought on “This Week in Travel – Episode 18”

  1. Hi Gary,

    I am repeating the comment here that I made on the This Week In Travel blog.

    Wow!

    Thank you so much for spending so much time talking about our passion project- The Greatest Social Media Adventure- on your show.

    OUCH!!! That hurt!!!!

    I do feel the need to comment on a few things however….

    I do in fact make my living in new media and social media. I have been a two time organizer of Podcamp New York, I have produced the first ever scripted web drama to stream live on the internet, I have co-produced the first of its kind webathon that received 17,000 unique live views in an 8 hour time period. My work, on no budget and purely with social media marketing has been covered by The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and The Huffington Post, as well as been featured on iTunes. I have been vice-president of a well known online video company, I currently handle both new and social media for a school, with excellent results. I have spoken on new media and social media at conferences throughout the US, and I train users in social media for a Fortune 500 company.

    The pitch is a new media pitch for a company that I love, and which has virtually no new media presence. Yes, some of the elements I am pitching to them anyone can do- but they aren’t – Cunard line currently has 1500 followers on its twitter account and 3000 fans on facebook and most of their youtube videos have less than 2000 views. For a company with such a big fan base, it sure seems like they need a multi-platform push. In addition, I firmly believe that the first cruise company to truly embrace new media across every platform will get a huge PR push, and my personal experience speaks to that.

    In addition, a major part of the video and pitch is teaching Cunard passengers how to themselves use platforms like twitter and facebook and blogging (as you know world cruises have many days at sea and classes on a variety of topics are regularly taught on board), a win for their passengers, and win for Cunard, as passengers actively using social media to tell their own stories is the best word of mouth marketing there is.

    The name, “The Greatest Social Media Adventure in the World” comes directly from Cunard’s own World Cruise literature which uses the phrase “The Greatest Adventure in the World”. A phrase that Cunard would readily recognize.

    Our feelings about Cunard were honestly and truthfully set forth in our video. Our dreams have come true aboard their ships, and I believe our excitement and passion come thru in our videos. I realize that to you we seemed “kiss ass”- all i can say is that our feelings were truthfully and accurately expressed.

    I am only touching on some of the criticisms you expressed on your show. Some of your suggestions are excellent- and perhaps were we to do this again we would incorporate them. Some of your suggestions we decided against specifically for reasons of time and schedule.

    I also do want to note, that as this video and site were meant as a pitch specifically for Cunard i did not publicize it at all until I met with Cunard. I am proud of the retweets it has received since then as they are uniformly encouraging and positive and come from people I greatly admire.

    Best,
    Kathryn Jones
    @kathrynjones

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