There has been lots of excitement over the new T-Mobile ad in which lots of people dance at Liverpool Street Station – how clever, how interesting, "golly can you imagine if that actually happened"…but no one seems to have pointed out the fact that it's not remotely an original idea – have a look at Improv Everywhere's brilliant Grand Central Station or Food Court Musical. Hmmm….OK so it's not exactly the same but you'd have thought the makers of the T-Mobile ad would have at least given a hat tip to the (to me) obvious source of their inspiration.
I sort of took it as read that this was the inspiration – did people think it was the first time it had been done, then?
No mention of any source of inspiration in any of their press release http://bit.ly/14jP1 To me it reads as though they came up with the idea (it won’t let me link to the specific release but it’s titled “T-Mobile dances across our screens with innovative multimedia campaign”
I’m not sure people are thinking it’s original either. Surely the early flashmobs are another inspiration, and PKRC (or whatever the prisons initials are!) too.
This is the kind of thing, that if it came up in a brainstorm, I would be vehemently against it, saying with 100% conviction that it’s hackney’d and would be seen by consumers as copycat, fake and inauthentic.
However, let’s be honest, as mainstream brand fluff for a mobile network with no discernable brand characteristics other than young, cheap, and magenta, I think it’s doing an excellent job, and all the mum/aunt-type people in my life forwarded it to me on email or Facebook saying how cool it was. So therefore it’s righteously successful. It makes me want to choke myself to death with a copy of New Media Age.