After making our holidays cheaper, Easy Jet is now helping us tackle the burden that is to organise them.

We’ve all been there – already struggling to find a convenient date or place for a simple catch up with our mates, organising holidays with them can quickly turn into a nightmare of emails and planning (and that’s even before discovering that half of them snore).

The new Easy Jet Facebook application ‘Holiday planner’ appears as a lifesaving tool.  It’s quick and easy to use and allows users to select destinations, dates, budgets and invite friends to join the trip.

This is the first time that a travel company is offering full booking facilities through Facebook – it actually makes me wonder why no one else (erm, including me) has thought of it before.

It’s always great to see a brand being involved in social media for other reasons than because all its direct competitors are and they feel they need to do it too.

Easy Jet appears as an innovator (once again) by taking a step further and using social media for e-commerce: a wake up call for other brands to realise that there is a whole range of opportunities behind straightforward campaigns, however successful some of them are.

If you have been working in PR for a couple of years or have dealt with, mingled with or shouted at PR professionals, then you must have come across what is commonly known as ‘a typical wanky PR expression’ – it makes you cringe when you hear it but for some reason you can’t stop using it, especially in front of your clients and it reminds you that, well, PR is also a typical wanky sector and you’re part of it.

After only a short chat amongst my colleagues, I have managed to compile a selection – feel free to use them if they aren’t already part of your PR vocabulary:

1. To ride the tiger
2. Bluesky thinking
3. To push the envelope
4. To step up to the plate
5. To throw it against the wall and see what sticks
6. To pluck the low hanging fruits
7. In a nutshell
8. Ducks in a row
9. To think outside the box
10. To touch base

In the Consumer team, we have recently adopted the term ‘ride the tiger’ as our new mantra – all management books agree that it helps to pull everyone together and brings that extra bit of motivation to a team, and in our case laughter.  We have since noticed that our mantra has taken on a life of its own and has now started an international trend.  Or so it seems.

Celebrities and brands are never very far from each other.  After many stories in the past weeks showing how some sportsmen can terminate sponsorship contracts in more time than sending a naked picture by text message, some PRs clearly still have faith in A-listers.

In fact, Magnum, the yummy ice-cream brand announced last week that Benicio Del Toro, the no less yummy Hollywood actor will be the new face of the new Gold ice cream.  After Eva Longoria and Eva Mendes, it is now our turn ladies to sit back and enjoy these sexy ice-cream ads.

The male opinion on Twitter was quite negative and they didn’t seem to see the connection between the two, whilst the ladies on the other hand are clearly more appreciative.

How do you make sure you choose the right celebrity for your brand?  I believe if the celebrity is credible and its personal story fits the brand, then why not?   In this case, Gold ‘aims to reflect the brand’s indulgence and chocolate credentials’ and ‘the campaign will build on the brand’s positioning as the World’s Pleasure Authority’ according to Unilever which look right on target for Benicio.