Flash mob hits the beach in Australia

I think this is a cracking film.

It is great entertainment that will get the brand (Flip MooHD digital video cameras) noticed.

It delivers a message that is completely relevant to what brand is all about.

I would love to have been at Bondi beach to watch it being made (rather than at Leicester Square watching the making of the T-Mobile event).

Brand Experiences to get a brand Chosen

Choose is the second stage of the Path to Advocacy and is about the process that the consumer goes through when choosing which brand(s) they are likely to buy.

This stage is about getting your brand onto the consumers’ short-list.

This used to be all about traditional media - using high impact, coverage, frequency, recency, etc. However, the internet now means i) consumers are very interconnected with each other, and ii) the way they behave and use media has changed. They don’t trust traditional media in the same way, they research differently (usually on-line) and actively seek relevant opinion/advice of others (e.g. friends & family and/or independent experts).

To succeed today brand owners must deeply understand their target consumers’ behaviours, particularly:

a) How and where consumers are getting information about brands

b) The consumers’ motivations for choosing. (These can be driven by functional needs e.g. specification, colour, price, etc and their emotional needs.)

The start point for marketers is making sure their brand is providing the right (usually functional) information, at the right time, in the right place. Effective ways to do this is include sampling or a good internet strategy (e.g. search, brand website, etc).

The other critical requirement is about making the brand relevant to the target consumers’ lives. It is where PR (Virgin, Marks & Spencer, Agent Provocateur), experiential (Electrolux), social media (Dell, Wispa, T-Mobile) and advocacy can play a big part.

T-Mobile - Trafalgar Square event - Part 2

I went to the T-Mobile's Trafalgar Square event and watched 13,500 doing karaoke.

It achieved great PR and the TV ad [see film] has enjoyed a lot of positive editorial [Read: my friend Faris – 'Bring people together and see what they do' and Futurelab– ‘T-Mobile gets it’].

I like the ad and think it nicely captures the ‘Life’s for Sharing’ idea in a warm and engaging way.

Good work T-Mobile.

The challenge for them now is to build on the positive goodwill and buzz created through the current activity by ensuring they deliver brand experiences to existing users that live-up to the Life’s For Sharing promise.

My advice to T-Mobile is to:

  a)  Ensure they deliver customer service excellence.

  b)  Find ways to delight customers by adding some magic to the relationship.

I believe to win brands need to ensure they deliver positive brand experience at every touchpoint - from the brand promise (advertising) to brand delivery (usage experience) to delighting consumers. If they can do that it is very likely they will move consumers down the Path to Advocacy – a proven success strategy.

This is something O2 seems to do very well. [see case study]

T-Mobile could create a unique brand experience

This will be interesting.

T-Mobile have posted an invitation on You Tube to attend a flashmob event tomorrow night (6-7pm 30th April) at Trafalgar Square in London. 

T-Mobile's Liverpool Street Station Flashmob on and off-line campaign is very good, but this event could help take it to a whole new level.

Flashmobs depend on social media but I think the massive increase in Twitterers will magnify interest in this event due to the retweet button, which causes stories like this to spread like wildfire (aka the 'Boyle' effect). 

I think this event could achieve significant scale (and maybe notoriety) and create a unique brand experience that people who turn-up will talk about.

How cool is that? 

I might even go there to see what happens.