Advertising has a way of latching on to new and innovative ideas and taking ownership of them. Take online virals for example. About 10 years ago the concept of a viral was relatively unknown among most of the general public but through the huge boom in online user numbers and websites like youtube viral videos are now ten-a-penny, and virtually everyone with even a minor understanding of what the internet is knows what they are. Advertisers latched onto virals pretty quickly and some early and incredibly successful examples, Burger King's Subservient Chicken probably being the best known one or BMW's The Hire another very popular one, showed advertisers just how powerful this new tool could be. Nowadays advertisers everywhere are trying to come up with the best new viral video that will catapult their brand to new levels of popularity. In my opinion most fail because people are too familiar with virals now. They used to be new, different and intriguing to customers, now they're just another video in a long list people have seen on any given day. Last year's Old Spice campaign was the only one that's really stood out for me recently. There's also the problem that there are just too many great videos online that aren't related to advertising that people can entertain themselves without having to rely on advertisers input.
(While we're on the topic of virals I disagree with the notion of 'creating a viral' as advertisers try and do. A true viral happens spontaneously and unexpectedly. It's a random video that suddenly becomes massively popular. Maybe that's just semantics though.)
Flash mobs are another interesting phenomenon onto whose bandwagon advertisers gleefully jumped. Similar to virals flash mobs started to become popular about a decade ago and since then there have been countless examples of famous and successful campaigns built around flash mobs (you've surely seen T-Mobile or The Black Eyed Peas on Oprah by now) that it's almost an overused medium. They're just not surprising for people any more.
Well this video shows that flash mobs aren't completely redundant yet, you just need to turn the whole idea on its head.
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