Kelly Brook has become the face (and body … and legs) of a new campaign by O2 Travel celebrating art of the traditional seaside postcard. The latter-day postcard girl has worked with O2 Travel to create a digital take on the classic postcard, bringing it up to date so a new generation can stay in touch and share their holiday memories whilst adding a touch of fun and traditional holiday glamour.
The campaign comes as research shows that traditional picture postcards are declining. Commissioned by O2 to support the launch of O2 Travel, a new service providing customers with a worry free way to use their mobiles throughout Europe this summer, the research found that just one in six people in the UK have sent a postcard home this year (16%). Almost half (45%) of UK adults today have never event sent a postcard, with over half of under 24 year olds never even considering them.
To help preserve the glamorous, saucy and sometimes silly art of postcards for future generations to enjoy, O2 Travel has teamed up with Kelly Brook to make a series of “social media postcards”. Celebrating the joy of sharing memorable holiday moments, the entirely new postcards have been commissioned to immortalise Kelly in the style of 1950s seaside images.
Exclusive personal photos taken of Kelly on her holidays have been reimagined and will be shared by her from her next break with her thousands of fans and followers worldwide. Offering anyone the chance to have their very own “digital postcard,” O2 Travel is giving 10 travellers the chance to have their own holiday snaps “postcarded”.
O2 will be “postcarding” 10 of the best holiday snaps sent in to its social media channels. Entries will be accepted via o2travel@o2.com and via tagging pictures on Twitter or Instagram with the #o2postcards hastag. The best ten will be turned into postcard art by O2 Travel’s professional team.
The latter-day postcard girl, Kelly Brook said:
“For years I used to send postcards home to family and friends. It was always the cheekiest, funniest ones that I could find. Sadly, I don’t see any of those images any more. Like most people, I want to be able to share my holiday as it happens – sending friends photos home on Twitter and Facebook. The chance to be immortalised by a 1950s postcard illustrator was too good to pass up – if we can’t save the postcard, then at least I can have a role bringing it up to date for a new audience to enjoy.”
Holiday makers are now far more likely to send messages home via their mobiles than they are to send a postcard – with the text message the biggest cause of the postcard decline. O2 Travel research found that over half of travellers surveyed by O2 Travel (60%) use texts home to keep loved ones up to date. Phoning home (39%) is the second most popular way to stay in touch, while a third of holidaymakers (34%) use Facebook to share news from their travels.
O2 has seen the trend increase during summer 2012 as we see the first truly “social summer”. UK travellers’ mobile internet usage whilst on holiday is growing at a rate of more than 100% a year. New tariffs such as O2 Travel, which gives customers travelling to Europe up to 25MB of data a day for £1.99, help holiday makers Facebook and Tweet, access email and share photos via Instagram, as well as check maps guidebooks and the news while they soak up the sun.
Sally Cowdry, Marketing and Consumer Director at O2 said:
“Whilst we know how much customers love the ability to instantly share holiday photos and messages with those back home, we felt the disappearance of a Great British tradition of postcard art would be a sad loss. Therefore we want to do our bit to keep the art alive and use mobile and social media to help make the illustrations relevant to a new generation.
“We hope the O2 Travel postcard campaign will help us engage people with the art of the postcard – and bring it back from the edge.”
Jelly Illustrators founder, Charlie Sell, who is creating the O2 Travel postcards said:
“We love the sense of nostalgia, British humour and colour that traditional seaside postcards celebrate. Allowing holidaymakers the chance to celebrate and share their own personalised digital cards will help the classic craft become contemporary and help the current generation appreciate a part of national art history.”
Additional information:
The “Death of the postcard” research was based on a poll of 2000 UK adults for O2 Travel by One Poll
O2 Travel offers data for just £1.99 a day for both Pay & Go and Pay Monthly customers. For that, anyone on the network can get 25 MB per day. That’s enough data to …
- Spend up to 2.5 hours surfing the web to find great local restaurants, bars, clubs and entertainment
- Post up to 10 snaps to Facebook to make friends green with envy as O2 customers soak up the sun
- Access up to 100 emails (with attachments), so customers can keep an eye on the office from the poolside
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