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Mon, 21/01/2019 - 13:55

Canary Islands uses the concept of fake news to promote the archipelago on “the saddest day of the year”

Image: 
One of the images of the video “Stop Blue Monday for a good atmosphere - #TrueMonday”, Canary Islands

For several years now, as part of its context marketing strategy, Promotur Turismo de Canarias has taken the idea of Blue Monday to promote the islands within the concept of #StopBlueMonday, putting across the idea that the saddest day of the year doesn’t exist in the Canary Islands or anywhere else, and that, in reality, it is what we today call fake news.

This latest campaign has been 85% co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund, and is aimed at the domestic market, as well as at the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Italy, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Norway and Sweden. Central to the campaign is a video, the most highly used format on mobile devices, which is to be launched today, 21st January, on social media. Viewers are made aware that fake news have great potential to generate a bad atmosphere and bad feeling, through a message which looks to go viral and garner social comment, and whose main protagonist is the fine climate in the Canary Islands, turning this Blue Monday into a #TrueMonday.

A website has also been created to manifest its opposition to fake information, which offers advice on how to differentiate between items of true news and those that are not, inviting audiences to take a test to determine how able we are to make the distinction between the two.

The third Monday in January has been deemed as being the saddest day of the year, and is labelled Blue Monday by many media sources, and stems from a famous study based on a formula compiled by a professor at the University of Cardiff, Cliff Arnall. The researcher mixed a range of variables, including climates, salaries, debts and unfulfilled resolutions, and came up with this day as the worst date on the calendar, all as part of a publicity campaign.