The perils of a Bank Holiday weekend. I half write this…and never publish. Instead, I go to a village fete, watch some MayPole dancing, have a go at a Tug of war and stay off the web for the day. Then again, it never got published as there’s no product videos in the top ranked list for the last week. Instead, here’s something I’d like to see more of. A straightforward instructional video about the symptoms of Swine Flu from the US’s Centers for Disease Control. It’s a sensible decision for a government body to use social media for information, they’re going to be able to reach people who may not usually access the TV news or newspapers. Even more importantly, they’re not relying on a journalistic interpretation, which usually has a different goal, not information for to sell more papers or get more viewers.
Archive for May, 2009
Here’s what T-Mobile were up to on Thursday, a sing-a-long. The ad is the crowd singing Hey Jude, with some glimpses of Pink, but she’s not the focus, the crowd is. The first video is the full 4 minutes of the song, the second is a recording of the 2 minute ad that appeared on TV (the official channel does not have it yet). At some point I’m guessing there’ll be a 30′, digital billboards and all other stuff. (just as I was writing this, the 30′ was on TV)
I like this, it’s far more authentic than the dance ones, where they’ve hired a bunch of professionals to turn up and do the dance. This really was a flash mob, called together through teaser videos, some judicious seeding and word of mouth. Apparently 13,500 people turned up to sing-a-long. As demonstrated by the many videos on YouTube and images around, many of them had cameras and phones. I;ve seen a lot of buzz about this, so I think it worked for them, at least from a brand awareness side. Given the current company situation, I think they need it!