The way I see it, flash mob stunts are like ambient marketing. High impact with low reach. Except of course, with the internets, the reach is heavily extended.

Take a look at this recent one by Flip…

Fail. But it’s not because it appears nearly everyone on the beach is a paid actor. This episode of the Mumbrella podcast suggests there’s no one being engaged with. But as stated above, the people physically there mean almost nothing, it’s the people who are sitting in office chairs watching it as we speak that matter.

And the fact that the initial video received 150,000+ hits in less than a week is a testimony to that.

Actually, even the idea behind this video I quite like. Flips are pretty much the most portable video camera on the market, perfect for capture the spontaneous events that happen in your life… like a flash mob.

But the execution let it down. The flash mob thing has been done, and without pushing the idea further it gets lost in existing freeze stunts and something about a mobile starting with the letter T. The initial release of the unedited amateur video also wasn’t the smartest move. Here’s a tip, when you’re trying to promote video cameras make sure the footage is of a high quality. It almost seems they wanted to rush it out to be the first to put it up, unable to give up control of their message.

Perhaps cameras could have been handed out before, something along the lines of you’ll never know when you need a Flip. Encouraging people afterwards to submit it online, then using all the angles and some of their own footage making their own version.

Of course the biggest reason it fails is because none of it is branded, not well anyway. David sums it up nicely. The idea was lost in its execution. What do you think?