#Eclipse Social Media Roundup

When celestial bodies align, the brands do battle in Twitterspace

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IMAGE: Blueclaw

Last Friday’s partial (unless you happen to live in the Arctic ocean) solar eclipse was one of those rare events that gets everybody out on the street and talking: our team was no exception - as far as the office balcony, at least. It was due to be visible in Leeds at 9:33am so we headed outside with some novelty sunglasses and a pair of shoddy Ebay welding goggles to take a look.

Breathtaking cosmic forces were in play! The nearby pedestrian bridge over the Aire was the sun-spotting location of choice for some (excuse the finger in shot).

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As it happens, while we had a fantastic view, we didn’t really get a great shot of it - or the local gaggle of swans who took the unexpected onset of twilight as a signal to go absolutely mental.

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When an event like this takes the attention of the nation by the scruff of the neck you’d better believe that brands sit up and take notice. So while we were all looking for the best vantage point to check out this dramatic shifting of the heavens and thinking up sarcastic Instagram comments for our photos of thick cloud cover, the content & social execs of everybody from Irn Bru to the BBC were doing their best to piggyback on the #eclipse bandwagon.

@JaguarUSA harnessed the sun to tease the alluring silhouette of their new Jaguar XF luxury sports saloon (even if the eclipse wasn’t really visible from the USA, tsk).

@redbull, no strangers to mucking around on the edges of space themselves, hijacked one of the awe-inspiring photos from the International Space Station to give us this particular offering. No mention of wings, we notice.

There were a lot of variations on this ‘object passes infront of another, brighter object’ theme (everything from a cabbage to the Death Star), including this Vine version by Scottish something-or-other flavoured pop @irnbru.

Purveyors of circular products fistpumped in anticipation of shares. Of particular note was @oreo, a company that seems to think it has a monopoly on both light and dark jokes after their Superbowl powercut hi jinks, who launched their own#oreoeclipse hashtag campaign.

Though I think @YOSushi might’ve just been fortunate enough to find this one stuffed in the back of the stock photography drawer.

So if you weren’t able to get the perfect angle to see the eclipse at least you had plenty of alternative entertainment right there on your smartphone. Who’d have believed that something so everyday as the sun could be such a marketable asset?