CorpComms Magazine

Flower delivery company Interflora is cutting out the middle man and sending flowers on its own behalf to cheer up people posting baleful status updates on Twitter. 

Tweeting staff have been monitoring the micro-blogging forum for signs of anguish and then contacting the dejected parties to find out their postal addresses and send over bouquets of flowers.

Ben Freeborn, head of brand development at Interflora, said: 'Interflora is all about delivering emotions, messages and of course flowers to loved ones. Earlier this year we sent some flowers to someone we had seen tweeting about the bad day she was having, we thought it would be a nice touch to send her flowers and make her day a little brighter - which indeed they did.

'Flowers are such an emotive gift and all the people we have had contact with have been so positive about the experience. It's really been a bit of an experiment and to be honest the results surprised us as much as anyone.  

'It's something we were a little nervous about doing as we were not sure of the response, but all those involved have really enjoyed the experience and it has sent a real buzz around the office... so we're going to do it again soon!'

The network of mobile florists is employing digital PR agency We Are Social to design its social media strategy. Amy Clark, account manager at the digital agency, said: 'We wanted something simple and really close to Interflora; something that would really tap into the same sentiment. Sending flowers to people just to make them feel good, to cheer them up.'

Simon Collister, account director at We Are Social, said: 'Interflora understands that to operate successfully in social media, you need to listen to people's needs and respond in a human, empathetic way.

'Our first campaign is a perfect expression of this - surprising and delighting people with unprompted kindness is a great way for Interflora to earn the social capital they need to become accepted in the online communities that are increasingly important to the success of their brand.'

The campaign follows on from another targeting mummy bloggers. A selection of influential bloggers in the parenting sphere received bouquets tailored to the design and colour-scheme of their blog, which many then chose to picture on their websites.

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