How Brands Are Using Social Media to Make a Splash With Summer Fridays

2 min read

Google and Priceline.com surveyed 15,723 Americans last year and learned that just 8 percent take “Summer Fridays,” or the privilege of getting a free day off—thanks, boss—or at least leaving between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. on days like today. That small percentage, though, isn’t stopping brands from digitally jumping into the theme. 

For instance, Delta this week announced a “Go Fridays” initiative, complete with a bot that will appear in New York-based companies’ Slack channels. For the uninitiated, Slack is a workflow management system that businesses use to expedite internal communications and eliminate email backlog. Programmatic advertising company Spongecell, social news player NowThis and online mattress seller Casper are participating; their staffers will see messages from Delta’s Slack bot, encouraging them to send an Out-of-Office auto-reply from their work email addresses.

“Delta will be giving some of New York‘s busiest people a chance to get out of the office and reboot,” said Bill Betz, Delta’s general manager, marketing communications.

The underlying message seems not-too-subtle: Hey, it’s summertime. Get out of the office and get out of town—and buy a plane ticket to get where you are going!

Delta certainly isn’t alone in attempting to capitalize on Summer Fridays.

Leinenkugel, for the second year in a row, is promoting an endeavor called #LeinieFriday, imploring business owners to let their employees off early on Fridays for the next few months. The Chippewa Falls, Wisc.

 

Yves Mulkers

Yves Mulkers is the founder of 7wData and a widely followed voice in the data and AI community. He curates the 7wData and AI Beat newsletters, reaching hundreds of thousands of data and AI professionals, and writes on data strategy, analytics, AI, and the evolving data ecosystem.