On January 15, Saatchi & Saatchi London shot this T-Mobile viral ad with 350 dancers performing routines, as commuters passed through the concourse of the Liverpool Street Station. The hidden TV cameras within the station captured the spontaneous reactions of commuters as they watched the dancers perform:

Like many other successful guerrilla/viral campaigns, the “making of” is part of the buzz, as it will likely to generate more discussions about it:

The three-minute guerrilla-style ad, which is part of T-Mobile’s ‘Life’s for Sharing’ campaign, aired less than 48 hours after being filmed, during an entire ad break of ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ on Channel 4 (UK).  As of today, the ad got 3.3M hits on YouTube.

Lysa Hardy, head of brand and communications at T-Mobile, said:

“Dance brings to life the fact that there are often unexpected, wonderful, exciting things that happen that you want to be able to share with your friends and family.”

Ad/Campaign Title: Life’s for sharing -- Dance
Client: T-Mobile
Advertising Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi London
Copywriter: Steve Howell
Art Director: Kate Stanners, Paul Silburn and Rick Dodds
Planner: Gareth Ellis
Account Handling: James Griffiths, Sally Nicholson, Sarah Galea, Celia Wallace
Producer: Ed Sayers
Media Buying Agency: Mediacom
Media Planner: Anna Berry
Production Company: Partizan
Director: Michael Gracey
Editor: Diesel Schwarze
Post Production Company: The Mill
Audio Post Production Company: 750 MPH
Date Released: 16 January 2009
City/Country: London, UK
Exposure: UK National

Footage from the event will be used across online, direct and retail channels. T-Mobile has also created a YouTube channel where people can upload videos, and see humorous clips featuring celebrities being taught how to do the T-Mobile dance by leading dancer and choreographer, Briony Albert.

The fully integrated campaign also includes digital outdoor and print (from 29 January), online (19 January) and radio (1 February). “Life’s for Sharing” will run across interactive TV (26 January) and air in cinemas from 16 February.

(source: Saatchi & Saatchi London’s Website)

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Thanks to groups like Improv Everywhere (Frozen Grand Central) the flash mob phenomenon has become popular all over the world in the last couple of years:

While this is the first commercial flash mob to take place in a London train station, it’s not the first time something like this was done. In 2003, London artists Ben Cummins (also founder of Pillow Fight Club) and Emma Davis started the Mobile Clubbing movement. Since then London hasn’t stopped seeing flash mob dances. In 2007, 4,000 individuals showed up at Victoria Station and danced to their own iPod music for 2 hours:

T-Mobile/Saatchi took the pop-culture concept one step further and used it effectively to create an engaging campaign.

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After watching the ad on television, Facebook member Crazzy Eve created the group “Liverpool Street Station Silent Dance” to organize something similar for friends.

In an interview to CNN, Crazzy Eve said, “I was watching TV and the T-Mobile advertisement came up and I thought, hm, let’s get my friends down to Liverpool Street and do a little dance.” In a true flash-mob fashion, the group grew unexpectedly as friends invited friends, who then invited their friends, and so on. The group, which now boasts over 15,000 members, completely took over the same Liverpool station on Friday, February 6, in a not-so-silent and quite messy countdown to 7pm and subsequent dance mob remake:

The event attracted so many people that there’s another one planned for this upcoming Friday, February 13th, at Trafalgar Square, London.