In thirty days, the European Coffee Run has completed 15,000 km in visiting 10 cities and serving 100,000 free coffees – and all to help ‘big-up’ the capabilities of modern vending.
And on Monday, 29 June, in the hours before the AVEX Conference convenes in Manchester Central, and as the final bolts are being tightened in the exhibition hall, the European Coffee Run comes to an exciting conclusion in down-town Manchester.
The AVA has played a blinder…
You see, the AVA has played a blinder: they’ve got Metrolink – that’s the company that manages Manchester’s tram system – to agree to host a ‘major-promotion’ free of charge. The ‘coffee car’ is to be parked-up at one of the busiest stations, namely Deansgate, in the midst of the Monday morning rush hour.
The gods of vending have been at work! Normally, you’d be looking at paying through the nose for the opportunity to engage with thousands of Mancunians but at this moment in time, with maintenance work set to bring cancellations and chaos to commuters, it’s as though Metrolink bosses have grabbed the opportunity to do something positive and popular that they hope will sweeten the sourness of service disruption.
The event is in the capable hands of the AVA’s excellent PR chaps and part of their mission is to get #vending ‘trending’.
For those, like me, who don’t really understand what it means when a hashtag is trending, here’s what our social media Queen Yvonne Reynolds-Young says we can do, if we want to do our bit to make the plan work.
‘There are still those who aren’t too sure what twitter and the other social media platforms can do’, she said hepfully. ‘Hopefully, we can demonstrate that engaging with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn can drive conversation towards AVEX, The CoffeeRun 2015 and vending in general at the same time as raising awareness of your personal business or brand.
Have your social media champions get onto your twitter accounts and let’s talk about this vending event.
‘First things first: have your social media champions get onto your twitter accounts and let’s talk about this vending event by including #vending and #coffeerun2015 in all your tweets’, Yvonne said. ‘Then, search #vending on Twitter and you’ll see how many others are doing the same. Similarly, search #coffeerun2015. Your company/twitter account will be up there with the rest of them – not only promoting the event but also your own twitter account and, therefore, business. It’s a win-win.’
Similarly, if you have an Instagram account, click this link to check out the latest pictures and follow the European Coffee Run’s progress at the same time!
So, there you have it.
Let’s make the most of this opportunity to get people talking – ok, ‘Tweeting’ and ‘Instagramming’ – about vending, and how good it is.
With such a huge, pan-European vending event coming to a close in Manchester on the day of the before AVEX conference; on the day before the show opens, surely it behoves all of us to do what we can to share the good news?
