The Black Eyed Peas flash mob

Taking a break from talking about advertisements, I would like to share my thoughts on flash mobs. The term is usually used to describe a random gathering of people who perform any action for a time on their own accord and are not influenced by public relations firms. In particular, I would like to talk about the The Black Eyed Peas flash mob which recently took place in Chicago at Oprah Winfrey's 24th season kickoff party.

I was impressed at the amount of coordination needed to pull off a successful act like that and the group of dancers in front must have trained pretty hard for this event. I couldn't tell from the video if the people all the way behind were dancing in perfect synchronization with the ones in front, but even if they weren't the dance was infectious and a few thousand people were doing the same moves in the mosh pit. I thought this was pretty amazing. I guess Oprah would agree with me as well since she had her mouth agape the whole time on stage.

Whether this was a paid publicity stunt by Oprah or The Black Eyed Peas will only be known by them. Based on their looks of wonder I'm assuming they were kept in the dark about this. Whatever it is, this event has generated a lot of good publicity for both The Black Eyed Peas and Oprah and it is almost a free advertising campaign for them. The power of the public certainly is able to generate a lot of hype in today's technological age, and this video found its way to online streaming portals like YouTube really quickly, getting millions of hits. People might start buying more albums of 'THE E.N.D' for the song 'I gotta feeling' because of this. People might think the dance moves are cool and start to learn it with the song. Basically, a myriad of effects can happen just from one flash mob that materialized at a show.

I enjoy listening to the group already prior to this event and found this video very entertaining. I am happy that the flash mob turned out be so successful and it was a very good twist to a regular performance. How about you folks? What are your views on flash mobs or The Black Eyed Peas? Mr Potato signing off!

Kit Kat's latest Campaign

The two videos above are part of Kit Kat's latest 'Working like a machine' campaign. In the videos, the main element working here seems to be humour, although one might interpret both advertisements as being totally irrelevant to Kit Kat. The central idea of the characters in the series of advertisement is people behaving like machines. In the first, we have the karaoke lady standing behind a television singing and in the second we have a cashier scanning products with his teeth. These out of the ordinary actions were obvious to me and it immediately grabbed my attention. The way Kit Kat was introduced into the advertisement was pretty smooth also as one was on a snack dish and the other conveniently rolled over to the cashier.

Keeping in mind that Kit Kat would be targeting children and younger people for these products we see a clean advertisement which is quite creative. Although I was a little annoyed at the end of the commercials, my younger kid brother enjoyed it as I saw him chuckling to himself so I guess it has the desired effect on people which is 'Come Grab a Kit Kat'. I preferred the Cadbury cartoon advertisement where the world was portrayed as chocolate, but I guess this campaign might work out as well for its humorous approach. Featuring real people in the advertisement also gives it a more personal feel.

What are your views on Kit Kat after watching this? Would you follow their slogan and 'Have a break, have a Kit Kat'? Share your views!