Royal Jordanian Proves Trolling Fills Airplanes
http://www.euronews.com/2017/05/08/royal-jordanian-proves-trolling-fills-planes

Many Middle Eastern airlines, most notably Royal Jordanian have recently used trolling on social media as a very effective means of marketing. World events have given them an unusually large amount of material to work with:

- The United incident. United was very vocal in trying to limit Middle Eastern airlines entry into US markets, calling them non real airlines, here was Emirates' response:

https://twitter.com/emirates/status/851845063999188994

-Trump’s election

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/royal-jordanian-airlines-is-trolling-donald-trump/520755/

-The laptop ban

https://twitter.com/RoyalJordanian/status/844874897620905988/photo/1

-The French election

https://twitter.com/RoyalJordanian/status/860973009288523776/photo/1

These edgy social media campaigns have gone viral and been highly effective. But are they playing with fire? For instance, just this week we learned of the real reason behind the seemingly arbitrary ban on electronic devices. Turns out there was a very good reason to ban them from specific areas:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4519314/ISIS-working-explosives-hidden-laptops.html

By mocking publicly and taking stances on highly contentious issues, these social media campaigns risk backfiring in a big way. Does that risk outweigh the reward? For the time being, the answer appears to be yes.