It was obvious that the PR-busting success of the Reef Island campaign earlier this year would spawn a round of similar efforts within a relatively short space of time.
Perhaps the first one out of the blocks is this wheeze from lastminute.com, which today launched a campaign to offer a "the ultimate career break".
The new employee will become LM's new 'official reviewer' of the best holidays and experiences on sale via the site.
The press release says over the course of the next three months, once a panel of industry experts have selected a candidate, the lucky winner will:
* Travel over 32,000 miles
* Spend over 60 nights away
* Visit eight cities across three continents - in three months - which could include Dubai, New York, Egypt, Paris, Barcelona, and Las Vegas.
* Experience a 5* lifestyle - equivalent to £20,000.
Etc, etc.
Nevertheless, PR is clearly at the centre of all this.
Lastminute.com has not only tried to tap into the psyche of credit crunched members of the public by espousing how the job is the "ultimate 'silver lining' to unemployed Brits", but a spokesperson admitted that the campaign was "a mixture" of a serious job and PR, Reef Island-style.
When questioned about the overall credibility of the position, given that lastminute.com clearly has more than 60 hotels on its books, we were told:
"We understand one person's reviews over a three month period may not be enough on their own to justify the role. We see our reviewer acting as a catalyst and start a social networking community on the blog around the destinations that he visits thus reaching out to 1,000s of 'reviewers'. We will be starting a dialogue on the blog where others can feed in and we will be using the 'chosen one' outside the summer period."
So lastminute.com will not only have TripAdvisor reviews on its site, but posts from its official reviewer, plus a blog, plus its Twitter feed.
Too much or too little of the social networking Good Stuff (the name of LM's recent ad campaign)?
UPDATE:
The judges will be:
Dan Bladon - Philias Blog
Chris Moss, Travel Editor - Time Out
Patrick Hoffstetter, New UK B2C MD
Mark Bower, Lifestyle Sales Director
Andy Washington, Travel Sales Director
Mark Fells, Marketing Director
Nichola Sharpe, Head of PR
hi, i live on a small island in the western isles, in scotland and its quite expensive to travel off the island. it would be great to travel of the island, and going abroad to work. it has been a dream to go to these countries, to travel the world. i am 20, 21 in febuary 2010, and it would be good to get the experience!!