You just can't keep a secret these days!!!

I came across an amusing story the other day.  It really brought home the power of social media and how difficult it is for anyone to do anything quietly, without anyone noticing.

Of course, the thing that was supposed to happen quietly was quite likely to not happen that way - I mean you can't really hide a box this big away!!!

https://twitter.com/jenayres/status/420246173522198528/photo/1/large

Another image of this same box was also shared on Imgur with the question:

What's the largest item you can have shipped from Amazon? Because I think my neighbor just got it.

 Readers of reddit and viewers of Imgur started speculating about what could be inside this box.

Very quickly, Ad Age media news got hold of the story and linked it to a campaign announced last September by Nissan and Amazon.  3 car buyers would have their brand new Nissan car delivered in an Amazon box.

Nissan then planned to release pictures and videos of the deliveries via social media next week - but the general public beat them to it by sharing the photos on social media themselves!

http://adage.com/article/the-media-guy/unboxing-photo-giant-amazon-package/290947/

I think this story will make great class material.  Show the picture of the box on the back of the lorry and get students to speculate what's in the box and where the truck is, who it's for, etc.
Then, show them the box with the car visible inside.  They discuss why a car was delivered like this.
Next, they can read the story of how the secret was revealed on social media and they could also discuss if this is a good or bad trend.

Language work could include work on wordbuilding and collocation.  Here is a screenshot of the word 'secret' from the English Profile vocabulary profile.

And here are the results of my search for 'secret' in the Cambridge dictionaries online:

I'll keep an eye out for the official launch of this campaign next week and share it with you.