I have an 11 year old son. He's a great kid. Likes school, has a good sense of humour, looks after his little sister and has nearly 60 friends on Facebook. I should know, I am one of them.
We recently went on a holiday. We were in Palm Cove. I can't tell you where we stayed because my wife and I decided that we'd keep it our secret.
Anyway when we were walking to our room after checking in my son, let's call him Olly, took this great photo of the 'lagoon styled swimming pool' and posted it on Facebook.
By the time he'd unpacked his rashie two of his friends on FB asked him where the pool was. Olly obliged. Bye bye secret. One friend replied, 'My mum says we have to go there. She is googling now.'
By day's end 7 friends 'liked' what they saw (thumbs up) and another 4 expressed their jealousy. Overnight another kid posted a photo of where he was holidaying; his lounge room complete with sad looking, half deflated, St.Kilda coloured balloons. Someone responded with clip art of Venice included a badly retouched image of himself on a gondola.
A quick series of likes, comments, links, gags and photos of holidays past and present were shared around.
Then came the winning move. Some girl who my son has never met (but she's a friend with many mutual friends) put the image of the gondola into the Lagoon Pool with the kid in his loungeroom watching it all on TV and the caption,"We're all on holidays."
Everyone liked this except the plants and animals on Farmville who clearly weren't being tended to while all this 'who is having the best holiday?' was going on. That's another story.
But what's my point? I am not sure but my son spent 8 nights with his parents. It was a great holiday (no comment of 'I'm bored'). I think one of the reasons it was 'I'm bored' free was because although he was not around his friends he could keep track of them, share jokes with them, read their thoughts and send photos without even leaving the lagoon. It was about being connected to what is happening now (whether you are there or not), connected to what's going on but having the freedom to share it with a friend who isn't. Being part of other kid's holidays, your friend's holidays might just be enough of a distraction to make it easier to enjoy your own.
As this is a marketing blog, I will also add having 11 year olds pester their parents about holiday destinations ain't a bad ploy either.
It works for Disney.