The texan tourist, Waterstone's best marketing campaign?

I doubt Waterstones envisaged a store mishap would generate them such PR coverage their PR agency could only dream to get them globally.

But the texan tourist who turned to Twitter as his first port of call to get himself out of the locked in Waterstones Trafalgaer Square London has created quite a stir on social media and news sites today.

Waterstones could have simply let the incident pass them by (once they let him out of course!) but with their brand name trending on so many social media channels this morning they decided to write a tongue in cheek blog post about the incident - What to read when you've two hours on your hands.... and are locked in a bookshop.

Whats even more interesting is that Audible didn't want to miss out on this trending opportunity and created a Twitter ad around the 'waterstones texan' trend.

Its great to see yet another large brand taking a potential PR crisis and embracing the advantage of social media, especially when they get money can't buy PR coverage and a viral campaign that they hadn't planned! Obviouisly there is a time and place for turning negative PR in to postive but in this case it was a very happy ending to a story and perhaps even a book/movie opportuniy for texan tourist 'the bookshop man'.