Today, 20 September 2013, will go down in the record books as one of Flow Communications’ most memorable days. There was snow on Table Mountain, quite a bit of blood (but no tears), lots of excitement around World Rhino Day, a 50th birthday and a SABC television interview … It’s been one helluva day.
See the day in pictures
Flow Joburg once again hosted local expert phlebotomists from the SA National Blood Service.
Our eighth in-house blood drive, this time around Flowstars and friends of Flow collectively donated 23 pints of life-giving red stuff.
Well done to all those who rolled up their sleeve and got poked!
Congratulations to Richard Frank, Flow’s programming studio Big Cheese, for winning the blood drive raffle.
“Today was my tenth donation and I am so proud,” says Kate-the-Great Rau, Flowstar media developer extraordinaire.
“Plus I scored an awesome beach towel – thanks, SANBS!”
Cape Town Flowstars eagerly dashed up Table Mountain today in an effort to build a snow rhino (more about that later).
Sadly, they were met with what can best be described as “slosh”. The light snowfall soon transformed into a mixture of dirt and wet, with some crunchy bits in between.
“We saw record traffic on tablemountain.net on 30 August because of the snow photos we posted on the day, but there wasn’t quite as much snow or as much online interest today,” says Roy Barford, head honcho at Flow Cape Town.
Nevertheless, Flowstars and quite a few visitors to Table Mountain had fun taking photos at the top while trying to eat snowflakes.
Flow’s collaboration with WWF sees the partners working together to create a Twitter storm with the #iam4rhinos to promote global awareness of World Rhino Day and the plight of the rhino.
The project, which aims to generate 1-million tweets for World Rhino Day (Sunday, 22 September), and #iam4rhinos hashtag has attracted loads of media attention already.
Aside from an interview on 5fm with Gareth Cliff, Flowstars involved in the project were interviewed by SABC this morning. The show will air on Channel 404 at 19h30 on Sunday, 22 September. Flowstars Zintle Mtyeku, Ella Marren and Tara Turkington have all also been interviewed for different radio stations. So far, the campaign has generated more than 40000 tweets, with a combined total of over 100-million impressions. (An impression is when the hashtag #iam4rhinos appears on a person’s twitter timeline, much like a word appearing in an article in a newspaper which may or may not be read by the reader. It’s a pretty impressive number, however you look at it!)
“Sunday is World Rhino Day and the aim is to raise global awareness about the plight of rhinos. We will be hosting a major Twitter session at our offices from 10am to midnight on Sunday, and everyone is invited. The idea is to get people to come here and tweet up a storm for #iam4rhinos,” say Melanie Feris, Flowstar Superstar.
Today we wish a wonderful lady a very special birthday! Flowstar project manager Ella Marren turns 50 today, and we’re all celebrating her happy half-century. Her day started with champagne and red velvet cake served in her office, and she received a fabulous spa voucher for two from Flow.
Ella, best wishes to you today, from all of us at Flow. You are one of the coolest 50-year-olds any of us know. xox