Monday 16 February 2015

The View from Inside a Flashmob



One of the best marketing strategies available is PR. Exposure that may go viral online, get reported in the media. Most of which would not be affordable if you were to pay for it. The following is an account by Jon Riley of Horsham Salsa of a Flashmob that ‘punched above its weight’ for publicity.

Looking around the Forum, a large open public space in Horsham, I could see a lot of familiar faces. We all acknowledged each other with slight smiles, nods and small hand gestures. We were on the inside. We knew what was coming next. We’d been planning this flashmob for several weeks. As I looked around, I thought that if I was a passer-by, all the people I knew would just be ‘another face in the crowd’. It was the first time I had run a flashmob. I’d seen quite a few on the internet and knew that done well, we could get a lot of viral impact on the internet.

I couldn’t believe our luck. We had extremely good weather for late May in England. I checked my watch. Two minutes to four. Best get ready. I unwrapped the Arcam rCube (upmarket ghetto blaster), plugged it into my Blackberry. Fired up Neutron for the best possible sound. Selected the right track and hit play. Turned the volume up to ‘11’ (check Spinal Tap if that doesn’t make sense).

My dance partner was nearby. We started off the basic forward and back of salsa. We were quickly joined by another 4 or 5 couples. I started the calls of Cuban Salsa – Rueda de Casino style. A format that involves a leader who calls out the name of the next move to all the dancers. The result is a circle of dancers all dancing the same move at the same time. Some of the moves are intricate, some are comical. The result is a group, all dancing the same choreography, yet it is ad lib. Partners are exchanged. More couples join the Rueda until eventually there are around 26 dancers all whirling around to the beat of up-tempo Cuban Salsa.

Outside the Rueda groups of people stop and watch. Cameras and phones appear. The people in the nearby café stop their conversations as they look over to see what’s going on. This was the on-the-day impact we had hoped for. Hopefully, these people are posting their films and pictures online.
As the last beats of the tune come to a close, the dancers all turn in random directions and walk off. We’ve done our best with the dancing, now the real work begins to capitalise on the event.

Time to maximise the upside to the Salsa Club business. I pull in the videos from as many sources as I can. Speed is important in cases like this. Over the next couple of days, I write press releases and send them to the relevant editors. Upload the video onto You Tube. Post links all over Facebook, our website, Twitter. Within a week, the first video we have posted on You Tube has gone over 1,000 views. Our Facebook Page receives an extra 30 to 40 likes. I gain another 20 or so Twitter followers.

Most of all, the dancers at our club had a great time doing it.

Not bad for a little dance club in a small town like Horsham.

However, to pull something like this off, takes work and planning.

To get this to work, I had to contact the local authority for permission. I had to persuade enough of the dancers at the club to come along, voluntarily on a Saturday, just for one dance. I had to submit a risk assessment to the council. I had a lot of trouble ensuring that the flashmob would be filmed. In the end, because of time restraints I release a single angle view. A great flashmob film cuts to the audience watching, has titles and end credits. However, sometimes in business, good enough will have to do.
I contacted both the local papers in advance. One was keen, the other couldn’t care less – thank you West Sussex County Times you were stars. I checked my public liability insurance. With the risk of a damp surface to dance on and the unpredictable nature of the public, I needed to be sure that I was covered if anyone got injured and blamed me. In the end, I had to purchase specific flashmob insurance cover – ouch. I had to find a boogie box with enough oomph to be able to be heard not just by the dancers, but further away yet didn’t require a power source. There was a crises when the person bringing the boogie box got the dates muddled. In the end, the dancing was the easy bit. In future, I’ll be better prepared to get the videos transferred to me much sooner. I will be ready to have them edited and made into a ‘mini-film’. I couldn’t afford professional filming, though if you have the budget, I would definitely go that route.

I actually got the press release about right. I wrote the story, gave them some background and pointed them at the pictures. They were able to edit my story into something that worked for them. The club got a nice online entry and a smaller entry in the local paper. The salsa club got the publicity and they had a story, which I keep posting  links to.
Although Salsa has the advantage that the end product is the dancing. It’s visual and entertaining, this doesn’t mean that your business can’t create a stir. Giveaway ‘stuff’ in silly costumes and film it. Do something for charity that involves appearing and disappearing.
Keep the film short. If the film ends up at more than 3 minutes, you will do well to have everyone watch the whole thing. Speed is of the essence. The film flashmob 1 has significantly more views despite the fact that Flashmob 2 is the better film. It was just two days later being posted.

All in all, flashmobs and staged events make great publicity and will gain you the sort of coverage and exposure you are unlikely be able to pay for.

Here are the links

Information about Horsham Salsa can be found here - www.horshamsalsa.co.uk



Coverage of our Flashmob in the West Sussex County Times http://ow.ly/vvN0Z

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