Flash Mobs Frozen
A quick followup to Jacinta’s post about Zombies and zombo.com – welcome to flash mobs. Very cool. Frozen cool!The Zombie Walks are a great popculture phenomenon.
Like a good flash mob moment, they appear to be democratically spur of the moment and yet a huge amount of pre-planning can often be involved. And they are becoming more and more popular, just check out the number of city specific zombie walks listed in the zombie walk forum. A clutch of states in the US, Australia, the UK, Finland, Brazil… people urrrrrrrrghhhh like it.
The zombie walk in Brisbane is a great example of the commercial power of flash mobbing with the charity of choice being…. you guessed it – The Brain Foundation.
What a fabulous tie-in and with not for profit outfits desperate for low cost or no cost special events that generates income and raises profile – this is a perfect fit. As an added bonus – unlike many other charity outfits with a more conservative position, the foundation through such a… well let’s be frank odd theme, also enjoys great targeted access to the difficult to mobilize Gen Y and to a lesser extent Gen X.
No surprise that the best example of flash mobs can be found in the USA. The following clip is a great example of a flash mob in process. Staged at Grand Central Station in New York – the mob on cue all froze, held their positions and then on signal reactivated. Memorable, well managed, and certainly worth watching… if for no other reason than enjoying the poor guy on the service buggy caught in the middle of the whole thing. Enjoy.
This and other similar flash mob moments were staged by Improve Everywhere – check out their site and the sister site Urban Prankster. Very inspirational for developing marketing campaigns that really create unsual and impactful experiences at ground zero.Certainly beats product tasters or girls in too small tops handing out leaflets.
Great website – I’m also reading the book I got yesterday that the guys behind Improv Everywhere have just published. It’s called “Causing a Scene, Extraordinary Pranks in Ordinary Places with Improv Everywhere”.
No doubt you can order this at Amazon or fishpond.com.au but I got it at Borders. Along with a coffee and a muffin but I guess that’s a need to know thing huh… Anyway the book so far is really interesting and the photos are awesome.
this book has started to really attract some strong media attention with various reviews and author coverage. i’ve done a little research on flash mobbing and so far it seems pretty ad hoc despite the amount of extraordinary pre-event production and co-ordination involved, but i haven’t seen much in the way of commercializing it. Anyone?
Check out these cool photographs of Zomnbies at http://www.geekarmy.com/geeks/982/zombie-flash-mob/
I say Brrraaains Brains… Brai.. Bra.. Br..B *