Dance

The UK mobile telecoms market is one of the toughest in Europe. Four major brands compete to for a very promiscuous consumer audience. By the end of 2008, T-Mobile was ranking bottom for customer value and brand consideration. To put T-Mobile back on top, a new approach was needed to engage, and retain the mobile consumers.

Recognising that the most popular aspects of mobile phones were the opportunity they provided for users to share the unexpected events in their lives, through calls, texts, photos and video clips, T-Mobile chose to make the idea of sharing central to its new campaign.

“Life’s for sharing” became the phrase that embodied the new T-Mobile philosophy, as the company set out to become the most famous mobile operator. “Life’s for sharing” was going to generate exciting content and T-Mobile needed to create coherent communities around that content, so that individuals could share through digital and social networks.
A flash-mob was staged in London’s Liverpool Street station, using 350 dancers who broke into a spontaneous dance routine amidst the hundreds of commuters. Footage started to appear on the “Life’s for sharing” YouTube channel as people shared the surprise with their mates and anyone else who wanted to watch.  The event was also captured on film by a professional film crew, and the resulting film aired during an episode of Channel 4’s popular reality show, Celebrity Big Brother a mere 36 hours after the event. The film was notable for directing viewers to the YouTube channel, as opposed to the T-Mobile website, which aided the viral nature of the campaign.

Fans of the clips began to imitate their own dancing flashmobs, and T-Mobile continued to drip-feed fresh content through the channel. Aggregator technology pulled the best, worst and strangest clips of dancing through to our channel.

To date, the film has been watched more than 16m times, and generated 12,000 comments. The popularity of the campaign with consumers translated into strong sales. Handsets sales increased 22% during launch week, and despite the difficult economic circumstances, T-Mobile sales grew 52%.