...or something like that.
Last week The NewHouse, the student ad agency I am a part of, took to the Quad to start a flash mob, that is, a spontaneous gathering of people in public used to garner attention from passers by for a cause.
The cause was to call attention to Hopenhagen, aka COP15, the United Nations Climate Change Conference which will convene in Denmark on December 7. We've since followed up with a connection to the online petition.
Several members of the agency (myself included, as evidenced in the horrifically pale image above) gathered on the Quad at 12:07 pm on Wednesday and removed our weather-appropriate attire for clothes (or lack thereof) more suited for the beach. We hope the message was clear: if we don't do something about climate change, the seasons as we know them could disappear.
Our work with this global client comes through Ogilvy and Mather, who I assume found out about TNH after our 2009 National Championship.
The flash mob was an experiment in a lot of non-traditional methods, including viral (we used facebook to the point of over-hyping the event) and guerrilla marketing. Our event drew reporters from several campus publications and the campus TV station, increasing impressions exponentially at no cost to us.
There's a lot of potential in events like these and we may begin seeing them on a larger scale. Ray Lapena, a friend and contemporary at Syracuse, organized a similar event (although his involved more clothes and more dancing) to build hype for his campus organization, First Year Players.
It's only a matter of time before these advertising messages will be appearing more often as advertisers attempt to get around people's ever-developing filter towards traditional marketing.
It helped that it wasn't freezing, like we expected. It was a mild 50 degrees, which may represent the start of global warming in Syracuse. I'm used to snow at this time.
No comments:
Post a Comment