Calvert Creative

This past January in the Liverpool train station in London, what appeared at first to be a spontaneous dance broke out. A day later, the event, which had been captured by hidden cameras, aired one time only as a television commercial for T-Mobile wireless, with the slogan “Life’s for Sharing.”

The ad was so compelling that people passed the word and shared the video, racking up more than 15 million views on YouTube, and spawning a bevy of imitations and events.
There are least three great lessons to walk dance away with here.

1. Content is still king
And people love a sense of fun. Commercials used to be so deadly dull that someone invented TiVo so we could skip them. Now they can be so good that people hunt them down and pass them on. But only if they’re really good. And these days, that means creative, fun, and often a little crazy.

2. Make it available
There are still businesses trying desperately to copyright and control every self-serving, promotional word that comes out of their mouths. A complete turnaround can save advertising money and win the hearts of consumers. Why not think of a way to promote yourself and then make your promotions something other people can download, upload, remix, share, imitate or even spoof?

3. Video is the future
And it doesn’t stop with YouTube. It migrates to FaceBook, smartphones, email, blogs, and so on. Make it visual, make it brief, but more than anything, make it portable.