With more than 12 million YouTube views, T-Mobile’s dance-takeover of Liverpool Street Station is one of the most talked about stunts of the year.
The company coordinated several hundred undercover dancers to overwhelm the station, surprising commuters with a series of dance moves — all filmed and shared online. Shown once on television, the video went on to spread rapidly via email and social networks and spawned a number of spoofs and similar events.
What we love about it is how it was the perfect fun, goofy stunt that’s easy to forward and share with a friend.
The Lesson: Your events don’t need to be serious or focused on your products. If you can help people have fun (and, perhaps, inspire them to dance), you’ll make it really easy to talk about you.
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Very cool campaign… But be aware that it wasn’t low cost or spontaneous. The ad was produced by Satchi & Satchi. They hired a troupe of 350 dancers dressed in street clothes to do the dancing. They had hidden cameras all around the station to capture the dancing and the reaction of people passing by.
It reminds me of another nice viral video called Dev Life. Very cool. Seems like it’s “community created” but actually is a professional production made to look spontaneous…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GtLJOqAve4
Chip, thanks for the extra details and the other example — much appreciated. Didn’t intend to suggest the T-Mobile takeover was a random happening.
But even though this was a well planned, highly-coordinated event by a big name agency, the simplicity and fun of the stunt and all the sharing and forwarding it inspired really appeals to us.
At its heart, the coordinated flashmob concept is something that anyone with a group of core fans could do. (Maybe not by taking over Liverpool Station… but, the park? The museum? Somewhere volunteers are needed?)
While the fancy flashmob campaigns are fun and easy to share, I think a smaller, genuine effort by a company and its biggest fans could also get people excited. (And, if anyone has an example that deserves highlighting, I’d love to help share it.)
Cheers,
Cale
Editor, GasPedal
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