Corporatization of fun: Friendly game of tag, or an ad for Orange Crush?
As an observer of society, I belong to some Facebook groups that may or may not turn into things. One of them was a generic flashmob group, which had hopes of organizing something fun at some point, but never actually did so.
Today I get an email from the group, which has been taken over by a “street marketing company” with big ambitions:
Objet : Hi flashmobers !
I am taking in charge your group.
My name is Ludovic and I am working in Trako Media, a street marketing company. We want to create an EVENT. A giant EVENT with thousands of flashmobers. We are already planning some future events where we would like everybody to activly participate. We gonna work full days and weeks to make it better than any other one in any other town.
Montreal is full of enthousiastic people who love having FUN.
We are already 46 members. Can you send invitation to your friends ? Talk to others ? Print and pomote the group on school or university walls ?We need 1000 flashmobers for the first offical Flash Mob. Don’t worry, I’m sure you ‘ll like our ideas :D
So let’s start and feel free to message me !
Sorry for my english :P Je parle un peu mieux français…
Maybe I’m just picky, but nothing kills the spirit of a flashmob than having it be organized by a marketing company, which will no doubt have some commercial motivation behind such events.
Seriously, you have to go read that harper’s article I pointed to, a few weeks ago. The one by the inventor of the flashmob phenomenon. There’s this part where he talks to some Ford marketing dude who’s organizing this “flash mob” to promote the new Fusion. Sounds so familiar.
Maybe you can access it through work?
http://harpers.org/archive/2006/03/0080963
I think it’s all right if they’re very forward about it. That gives people a chance to be ironic, self-aware, and also accept free samples, etc.
I mean, without a healthy sense of irony and a love of cheesy percs, how could one be, for example, a freelance journalist for a free entertainment weekly?? (and I’m not even going to talk about certain dailies!)
Seriously, I thought the “live, real-time” ad where professional dancers suddenly do a “number” in a London, England rail station was good. Then there are the various art happenings and expensive stunts where impoverished graf artists are suddenly given whacks of cash. You can call it “selling out,” but in the long run, does it affect them?
What if everyone did their marketing this way, though? What if every spontaneous instance of public fun suddenly became suspected as a marketing ploy? What if these things happened every day in every food court or public square?
Maybe that would be fun. Or maybe that would get annoying very quickly.
Maybe you should take this (long overdue) cue to get out of this ‘mass-performance art’ business? What was fun in 2000 is just street team now.
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