The new British T-Mobile "Life's For Sharing" ad features a crowd that magically breaks into song and dance in the middle of a train station. It's like a cross between Improv Everywhere's "Look Up More", the Filipino prison "Thriller" and [spoiler] the end credits of "Slumdog Millionaire." Not surprisingly, we totally like it.
The spot is the brainchild of ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi, for which 350 dancers were hired. Its immediacy is unique: Shot January 15 with ten hidden cameras, the spot first aired in the U.K. on the 17th two days later.
T-Mobile worked behind the scenes with Network Rail, the company that owns British train infrastructure, and with the Liverpool Street Station in London to get clearance for the flash mob style dance, modeled after spontaneous gatherings like a 2007 silent rave at Victoria Station, in which over 4,000 commuters gathered during rush hour to dance to the music of their iPods for two hours -- a stunt repeated in New York's Union Square in April.
Liverpool Street is an old pro at appearing onscreen; it was the set for two BBC fictional movies about terrorist attacks on London and makes a cameo in the 1996 movie "Mission: Impossible."
Related Stories:
· Life's For Sharing campaign channel [YouTube]
· 2007: 4,000 Flash Mob Dancers Startle Commuters At Victoria [This Is London]
· 2008: For 1,000 Solo Dancers, a Soundtrack of Silence [NY Times]
[Photo: Adrants]]]>