SubscribeSend a tweet and change the world
by Darren
Well that came out of the blue. I thought we were in for a long(er) battle here. It’s been tough so far, but that’s nothing like the battle it would have been to carry on through the weekend in the face of seemingly heartless and blunt opposition.
I was wandering around Long Acre at lunchtime talking to Louise and James on the phone when the news broke, first about the penguins. There were some tears – the emotion after what has been a difficult week just had to come out.
I want to say a heartfelt and genuine thank you to Hamleys. Finally you’ve listened and acted. I’m still not sure why you took so long when 180,000 people told you via twitter, email and phone that they felt this was wrong, but nevertheless thank you. We hope you will never consider this kind of stunt again.
Obviously there are so many people to thank. Everyone on twitter (between us we sent 2.9 million tweets on this subject!) including a few who have been as tireless as me, Louise and James. I’m writing this on the fly so can’t namecheck you all right now, but you know who you are. Born Free (who broke the story first on CEO Will Travers’ blog) have also campaigned tirelessly to stop this, and I know Will has kept in touch with the situation and directed things from a visit abroad where he is also doing great things to improve animal welfare.
And finally, this wouldn’t have happened without James Barisic and my wonderful wife Louise. Louise has held the fort for much of this and kept me (and you) informed, while James’ social media skills were perfect to give this campaign the exposure it needed and keep it in the public eye all week.
Five tweets started all this on Monday night. A bit of a rant, that was all. I was outraged. And so were you. Sometimes I feel like we can’t do anything. This week you’ve proved that’s not true.
Send a tweet and change the world! For the better…..
You did that. I truly love you all. Really, I do.
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3 Responses to “Send a tweet and change the world”
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For a while I did think they were going to still go through with it but thankfully they did what was right in the end. The response was amazing. As well as the response on Twitter, the facebook community page started at 8pm on Tuesday has over 500 members! More than Hamleys had before this all started!
Well done on the tweeting a blogging front. I noticed some famous names were RTing the #sHamleys tweets (Sue Perkins and Nick Baker among them). And I think had we not been in the middle of a snow storm and the World Cup draw had taken place another time this story might have been picked up more by the press. Its great to see the ‘little man’ can make a difference
I was so glad to read their retraction today, about time too – hope it stops others from being so damn arrogant as to use animals as a publicity stunt. Perhaps they can positively move forward by actively educating kids about the animals via interactive technology, toys, some other kind of installation or promo programme (they could partner with London Zoo to sponsor animals with purchases of cuddly penguins, maybe even get their fact right that they don’t live at north pole along the way)
There are always good and ethical marketing opportunities available (I’m head of studio at a creative marketing agency) and they do have a genuine chance to move forward and do something decent after all this.
Besides all this – any chance of finding out who the ‘experts’ are who supply the animals? They’ll just go ahead and ‘supply’ them, like some kind of prop, with 6-hour delays in traffic for the poor creatures, to someone else. It’s still not right to see reindeer in a poorly protected pen eating out of something resembling a washing-up bowl
If their ethics allow them to think ‘supplying’ them to a high street toy store is fine, there are serious questions to be asked.
[...] Hamleys have decided to cancel the penguin event on Monday. As @wildlifephotog puts it, ”Send a tweet, change the world“. Well, sometimes at [...]