On my way to work today I spotted this; and I thought it was worth sharing…

A great example of making good use of your “offline inventory”, and integrating your available media types. The side of a dray van is a perfect rolling outdoor ad slot.

Now, I’m no snob; I’d take pork scratchings over sushi any day (ask @AndyBetts if you don’t believe me), but I haven’t set foot in a Wetherspoon pub for a good long while. What you can’t see,  just out of shot at the front of the van are the two magic words for any frequently-mobile business person.

FREE WI-FI

Sold! To the lady with the pork scratchings!

I think this is a really smart move on a couple of levels. Firstly, not only does this really position the ‘convenience-as-selling-point’ angle, to a professional commuter who often finds herself with an hour or so to kill between meetings and journeys; but secondly by promoting a feature I would previously not have expected to be available in a Wetherspoons pub, I’m now wondering if they may have something more to say to me.

As a social media professional, I’m already doing an “F&F” on them (fanning and following), as I want to see more about how they are evolving the brand and communicating to potential and existing customers. If I wasn’t a social media professional, if I were a travelling sales exec, I’d probably be intrigued too.

I’d be interested to know if this is agency or an in-house team. Whomever; they certainly seem to be going about their social communications in the right way. On mooching around the site quickly, there’s a friendly tone-of-voice to the copy, all social media touch points are integrated both on-site (and off-site as we’ve seen), and on looking at the fan page the posts seem to be an interesting mix of brand communications, staff and general public – with a pretty decent dose of interaction.

Maybe J D Wetherspoon can teach Nestle a thing or two?

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