Video of The Day: Marketing and Flashmobs

Episode 98: “Do you love me?”

I love the idea of flash mobs, even though I’ve never actually participated in one myself yet. I went to last year’s Real Life Rickroll at Liverpool Street Station, but I didn’t know the lyrics so couldn’t really sing along.

If you don’t know what a flash mob is, it’s basically a large group of people meeting somewhere and doing something unusual. For instance, the one that I went to was to get as much people together during rush hour at Liverpool Street station and sing Never Gonna Give You Up from Rick Astley and then leave. You can imagine the amazement of all the people who hadn’t heard about it beforehand. Another example is the Ninja attack. I don’t remember where it was exactly, but a group of people dressed as ninjas started fighting each other in a busy park.

Now T-Mobile has come out with the following ad:

[Watch the video]

While I do like how the people there responded to it, I’m a bit annoyed by it. All those people dancing have got to be professionals, right? Or at least hired to do this dance. Somehow this would have made more sense, more impact, to me, if they had organized this like an actual flash mob. Get actual people, who want to do it for the fun of it, not because they are payed to do it. Am I the only one who thinks this?