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T-Mobile’s Heathrow Flashmob premieres Friday at 2215 on Channel4

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T-Mobile have done it again with their Flashmobbing. This time they are apparently welcoming home weary travellers arriving into Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5.

Heh.

A combined total of 28 million folk watched the last two flashmob videos (the Liverpool Street dance and the Trafalgar Square Karaoke event). And if you assume there’s about 60-70 million people in the country that’s pretty good going. I trust the creative you dreamt this up got a big bonus.

Here’s what we should expect:

Henry Church from South Kensington in London, the first passenger to receive the welcome, said: “I’d just come in on an overnight flight from Washington DC and as I walked through the doors this woman started singing to me. I had no idea what was going on, I thought she was a nutter. Then all of a sudden what seemed like the whole airport joined in the singing and they were all looking at me and I was totally overwhelmed. One minute I’m thinking about the slog to get home and the next thing I know the whole arrivals hall is singing ‘Welcome Home’ to me. Unbelievable. I hope it gets into the advert because my mates and my missus are never going to believe me when I tell them.”

Haha! Brilliant.

As for the ‘premiere’ time, have a read of this:

The advert will premiere on Friday 29th October at precisely 10.15pm when a full length 3 minute version will be screened. In what is a world’s first, the ad will premiere across the entire ad break simultaneously on more than 80 digital and terrestrial commercial TV channels along with all of the major social networks including Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. It is expected to be watched by nearly 10 million people across the UK and reach more than 2 million households. To watch it online go to youtube.com/lifesforsharing.

That is some organisation, eh? I really like the ‘immediacy’ too — they’re filming and editing everything in under 36 hours.

The advert, which is being made for T-Mobile by agency Saatchi & Saatchi, is being filmed, edited and broadcast in under 36 hours and is the first ever to be filmed at Terminal 5. Spencer McHugh of T-Mobile explains: “We want to create adverts that not only show our products in a different way but are entertaining and interesting enough that people want to share them with their friends – whether that’s over a chat in the pub, on twitter or on text. It simply isn’t good enough any more to put a 30 second advert on in the break on Coronation Street. That’s why we are launching with a 3 minute version and will be launching on social and traditional media simultaneously.”

I will look forward to this.

Here’s the trailer, complete with rousing classical score:

[Yes, I just did embed a trailer of an advert… Never thought I’d ever do that!]

It looks like nice work T-Mobile!

15 COMMENTS

  1. I just like seeing lots of folk dancing together. I agree, there’s nothing ‘flashmob’ about it obviously as it has to be organised very carefully. Especially given it is at Heathrow!

  2. I’m with Ben here – utterly cynical hijacking of what was a moderately lame social phenomenon to begin with. But then Ben isn’t a housewife from the Midlands with a 5 year-old Nokia who needs convincing to get into mobile social networking, preferably £25/month on T-Mo.Much better that T-Mo openly said “We’re going to be nice to tired people and film it”.

    …and if it was aimed at ‘the kids’ then it’s an even bigger fail. Youth-30’s can smell astroturfing a mile off and it just offends.

  3. I think it’s quite exciting to watch on TV! Better than some guy walking
    along the street with animated 50p coins coming out of his pocket.

  4. Hi JSJ, Thanks for your pity.

    At times the whole mobile marketing world seems against me, I just want to weep for the poor orphans of the world who will never have a chance to audition for a pre-planned flashmob advert. It’s all I can do not to run out and throw myself under the nearest Nokia retailer and commit to an 18 month X6 contract. My world is grey, grey like the cubicle lining of the office where this advert was given a life it should never have had. Think of all the beauty, all the creativity, all the joy that could have been shared among the world by letting someone with half a clue make the ad, instead of hiring 300 people to humiliate tired travelers.

    I will shortly be embarking on many days of long-haul travel. Should I be greeted by a spectacle like this I will find the producer and strangle him with his own sense of achingly outdated social media hipness.

    (as for Ben, well, he lives in Surrey. I believe flights of angels bear him aloft to & from the station.)

    Now where’d I put me pint of Absinthe?

  5. Plenty 🙂 And sometimes even excellent creative advertising raises a smile and has me reaching for my wallet….

    …just not this tired old re-hash of the same idea as last year’s train station ads which purported to be something they’re not.

  6. And here was me thinking they were all busy running behind Ewan’s Range Rover to act as a first-line crash barrier.

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