11 Feb 2009

Flashers and flashmobs at Liverpool street

Flicking through a popular free London paper yesterday I came across a story about a flashmob organised via Facebook, mimicking a popular TV for a mobile telco. My first thought was one of amazement at the continued popularity of flashmobs, but then I started thinking about the actual PR idea behind the flashmob.

Flashmobs have been around for a while now and there have been some very successful ones and some not so successful. Most of the successful ones have not been organised by brands or on behalf of brand, they have been for individual causes, or more often than not for no reason whatsoever - think about the Rickrolling event at Charing Cross last year. Now I've yet to make my mind up on how involved the actual brand was in this, as it attracted up to 13,000 people (including some guy that stripped off) and that's a hell of a lot of "willing" volunteers!



As mentioned, it was organised through Facebook and it generated a hell of a result that will surely have some traction for the brand - whether or not they were involved or not. It begs the question, are the social networks opening up to the world of marketing to a greater extent?

MyTake - Brilliant brand awareness and if it was a managed and delivered campaign, then a big pat on the back to all involved. From a marketing perspective, the social networks have always been a bit of a sacred place and the likes of Facebook is littered with cock-ups by a whole host of different companies, but perhaps this is good news for marketers.....build it and they will come.



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