I had a mate from our office joined by my former CEO of Bates141 in Sri Lanka (who was in Dubai to collect his award for winning the Young Asia Leadership Award at a very colorful ceremony at the Meriden in Dubai). While we were sitting down to sip some colored water at Barasti, we were talking about some new forms of communication. I had to step down to the gents and when I arrived a few minutes later I found these two gentlemen on a roll, talking about “Flash Mobs”. Hold on! I am in advertising for awhile! I did not know about this?? So I decided to listen and learn what it was as it seemed extremely interesting.
So what is flash mobs? A flash mob is a group of people who gather at a predetermined time and place to perform an unusual act and disappear. For example you could have 50 people from all walks of life come near Carrefour at MOE. None of them know each other yet they have been individually informed by viral media to start yelling at the top of their voice for 10 seconds at a given time and vanish immediately after as if nothing has happened. Why do they do this? Because they can! :)
Such an act can be used to promote brands and products as well. Imagine if 500 people took out a can of coke each from their bags and drank it at the same time in front of Ski Dubai at 6.30pm today! That would be cool! And more importantly they all vanish in 20 seconds back to their shopping in the different parts of the mall.
One of the early examples of a well known flash mob was the April 2006 in London. At various London underground stations, people. It was reported that more than 4,000 people participated at London Victoria Station. This had an impact on the regular service of the system enough for the city's police to begin crowd control and slowly clear people.
Its nice to hear that people power is still the best power to communicate. Even if I had to learn this while the power of water was slowly taking over.
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