New T-Mobile "flash mob" ad in Trafalgar Sqaure

I didn't like the T-Mobile "flash mob" Dance ad at first.

I annoyed me that it was a blatant You Tube "Improv Everywhere" rip-off with less charm than the original. It felt forced and a little fake.  Everyone who I spoke to who worked in Advertising or Digital seemed to feel the same way.

And then something happened: I stopped asking people's opinion who worked in the industry and started to listening to people outside of the industry. Everytime that we went to the cinema and the T-Mobile ad came on the entire audience always seemed to be captivated, they laughed, in fact often there were little spatterings of applause. My mum loved it. My brother's girlfriend emailed it to me. My husband would stop what he was doing to watch when it came on TV.

There was a heated debate over at Scamp Blog which really got me thinking. It seems that this was a case of an ad that real people genuinely enjoyed, whereas the advertising media village didn't. 

This week Saatchis filmed their latest "flash-mob" ad in Trafalgar Square.  I actually didn't mean to go, I was on my way to She Says but I got caught up in the crowds of thousands who had turned up to be a part of the ad and the experience.

Hmmmm - the world is falling apart financially, everyone's fretting about swine flu so maybe what we need from our brands at the moment is a little light relief and a bit of fun.  Human beings are by nature sociable, we enjoying being a part of something, we enjoy enjoying ourselves. The filming of the T-Mobile ad was quite simply enjoyable.

And by the way, totally delivers on the brand thought "Life's for sharing."

Congrats Richard and team, I actually think it has the makings of a great and popular ad campaign.

Comments

[dougie]

the ad sucks though. just seen it

[david brain]

I totally agree. I hated the first ad for all the reasons you mentioned and I like the second even less, but a number of people in non 'media village' jobs have mentioned it and like it. My daughter loves it and is mad I didn't take her to trafalgar square on the day. Ironically I was walking through Traflgar square when they were setting up and dashed off a sarky tweet. Am obviously elitist meeedja twat.

[Tim]

My girlfriend loved it and she's usually my acid test because she doesn't think "ads work on me". Why I think the first ad worked so well was largely down to it's execution. Improv Everywhere has been knocking around on office emails and brainstorms for 18 months but what this team did well was take the core concept and rinse it across as many channels as that would fit and execute really well. They used PR well to create momentum towards a 'moment in time' (i.e. the ad launch) and then from the event itself, have used video content from the day to extrapolate the campaign into other mediums. Had a chat about the campaign here; http://whirledgital.com/2009/01/18/t-mobile-the-dancing-queen/ (pardon the plug!)If I were a client, it would tick a lot of boxes...

[Rodders]

As someone who can't dance, hates kareoke & doesn't really listen to much music...these ads were captivating to watch. Not my 'cup of tea' mind!

[Leo]

As much as we ad people hate to admit, most of the time, what works in public usally isn't the most innovative piece.

Also, people who are early adopters tend to become tunnel-visioned to think that the rest of the world is also on the cutting edge of popular culture and thinks that something that only happened a few months ago is already oudated. The truth is a big chunk of people had not been exposed to the Improv Everywehre clips and therefore found the Tmobile piece to be not only entertaining, but more so uplifting.

[amelia]

And I guess that the judges at Cannes loved it as they awarded it Gold.