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The Power Of Advertising: Dancing Flashmob Closes London’s Liverpool Street Station

flashmob_dane.gifJust last week we saw the true power of advertising and social communities.

In an imitation of a popular T-Mobile ad, a flashmob dance was organized on Facebook, with the result being that one of London’s biggest train stations was closed down during a busy Friday evening! See the videos of here.

T-Mobile in the UK has recently been running an advertising campaign which shows Liverpool Street station being taken over by people who just start dancing. The advertisement was created by Saatchi & Saatchi, and was filmed with hidden cameras and featured 350 incognito dancers. It’s a great ad, here’s the video:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/1wkhmPMupR0" width="350" height="288" wmode="transparent" /]


And then last week, a group decided to reenact the ad, but for real. The used Facebook to organize a “flashmob dance” in the Liverpool Street station. At 7pm on Friday evening, just when the rush hour was busiest, thousands of people showed up and started dancing, each to their own music, thus recreating the T-Mobile ad, just a bit less organized. The station was closed for over an hour. Here is a video taken in the station:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/sBi66ICVtZA" width="350" height="288" wmode="transparent" /]


As quoted in an article in the Telegraph, Jennie Tuck, 16, a student from London, said: “It was an amazing atmosphere. Everyone assembled underneath the departures board and watched the clocks for a 10 second countdown to seven o’clock. When the clock struck seven, everyone went mad. People were dancing and screaming and jumping up and down.”

A London Police spokeswoman said: “We had to close the station because it was completely overcrowded. There were around 12,000 people here. The event was generally good humoured but we had to act because people would not leave. We had to make a couple of arrests for public order offences, but on the whole it was a peaceful and fun event.”


11.02.2009    Tags: , ,
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