What’s a Flash Mob?
A flash mob, defined by Wikipedia as “a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse.”
They’ve been used large companies and non-profits alike, as a non-traditional presentation that is used to generate buzz. T-Mobile coordinated the flash mob below to promote its “Life’s For Sharing” campaign, as you’ll see below. This video currently has nearly 14 million YouTube views.
While a flash mob caused a big stir about T-Mobile, they aren’t just something only huge companies can pull off. Flash mobs don’t require a lot of money, making them an ideal tactic for a small business or non-profit. Below you can see video of a flash mob done for a non-profit, Donate Life.
Flash mobs can be as simple as chasing something. Check out the “Official VT Flash Mob Banana Chase” video below. While it looks like something college students did for kicks, if Chiquita or Dole was associated with the coordination of this flash mob, they would have generated a ton of online buzz about their brand.
A coordinated dance, simultaneous freeze or banana-chasing aren’t the only things a company can do to generate some buzz non-traditionally. Guerrilla marketing, an unconventional and unexpected method of generating buzz, is an umbrella term for pretty much anything non-traditional you can do to get people talking. There’s no rule book for guerrilla marketing; it just takes one objective and a lot of creativity.
The Benefits
- Break the noise- Flash mobs and guerrilla tactics a fun way to get people talking about your product or service. The average American is exposed to thousands of advertising messages a day. While traditional advertising is a critical part of most campaigns, if you really want to get your point across, you absolutely have to break through in an unconventional way.
- Captivate your audience and generate traditional word of mouth. Flash mobs and guerrilla tactics are fun for the audience to watch and interact with. If you give your them something entertaining, they are likely to take their own pictures and video, and tell their friends about it.
- The beauty of flash mobs and guerrilla tactics is their potential to go viral. They provide entertainment that people want to watch and share. If T-Mobile’s Flash Mob was not recorded and uploaded to YouTube, then 14 million people would have not been exposed to its message.
At The Cyphers Agency, we have an entire WOM team that lives for these kind of projects. And that creativity thing? Yeah, we’ve got that covered.
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