Travel company guarantee good weather for your wedding – but it’ll set you back £100k
By Rich Leigh on Friday, January 30, 2015
In a cool PR campaign that very few members of the general public – if any – are actually likely to pay for, luxury travel company Oliver’s Travels* has guaranteed brides and grooms-to-be ‘fair weather and clear skies for [their] wedding day, using a ‘crack-team of cloud bursters’.
Yep, for the princely sum of £100,000 the company promise that the squad, made up of meteorologists and pilots, will fly their plane above the clouds and sprinkle them with silver iodide particles. The vapour in the clouds wraps itself around the iodide particles, condensing into water which then falls as rain. This process begins up to a week before the wedding to ensure the skies are cloud-free for the day of the wedding.
Though only available in France right now, with the possibility of it being expanded into the UK, the story impressively wound its way onto the likes of BBC Radio 2, Radio 4′s Today Programme, Metro online, Telegraph online (twice), the Guardian, USA People, Elle, Women’s Weekly Australia and the Mail Online, no doubt bagging a few nice links along the way and coming to the attention of event organisers and other people that actually can fork out £100k to avoid a bit of drizzle.
Although it sounds impressive, the cloud-bursting technology has actually been around for a while, having been trialled since the 1940s. It was apparently used in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a Paul McCartney gig and at Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding.
*A play on Gulliver’s Travels? WHO KNOWS?
Involved agency: Cow PR