A while ago I put together a team to organise the Guangzhou Freeze Flash Mob in Guangzhou, China.
The Guangzhou Freeze flash mob involved 150 locals and expats and
was well received by the crowd in Guangzhou, China.
For those who can’t view Youtube, here’s the video on Tudou
It took less than 10 days from idea hatch til event execution. Here’s what I have to share about the experience:
1. 1000 true fans. (Kevin Kelly’s 1000 true fans)
You’ll need some true fans/followers/good friends who readily support what you do.
“A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.”
I am an active member of Guangzhou Stuff, an lifestyle and expat online social network in Guangzhou. So that was my core group of heartwarming support who would be your first and immediate 50 signups, so that when you launch the marketing campaign to the public, you can say “within 6 hours, of release, we already have 50 signups!” Good confidence booster. It’s also a good test market. If your “true fans” think it won’t fly, it probably wouldn’t. GZ No Pants Day was introduced to the same group of “true fans” but there were more willing photographers than participants.
2. Talk to the tribe leader.
Beyond your immediate cirle of “true fans”, there are many triibes out there on the vast interweb for you to communicate to.
But don’t send impersonal messages like this:
Hello there! Glad to see you plugging in here!! Come join my really exciting event!! It promises to be the greatest…
We had our posts in some forums deleted, especially in tight-knit forum discussion based groups who find such audacity from a newbie against the forum decorum. On Facebook groups, we adopted a different approach in some groups. On the I Love Guangzhou Facebook group (4000 members), I approached the group owner, Toby, who was appreciative and kind enough to relay my message in his own words to his 4000 members. There’s a certain higher level of familiarity, trust and less spmell (smell of spam) when the group owner addresses his members in his own words compared to a bold newbie.
3. Illustrate clearly what you are doing/selling
The folks at ImprovEverywhere had already done great work. Fantastic 2 minute self-explanatory video.
So all I had to do was this:
4. Updates - Engagement, Excitement, Appreciation
Keep your followers engaged, and excited! In the span of 10 days, we sent 9 bilingual email updates to all signed up participants, informing them of event updates as they unfold. Each email addresses the tribe enthusiastically: “HEY FREEZERS!” followed by updates of member signups, professional volunteers successfully sought for camera team, publicity updates, simple instructions, simple teasers, and so on. Care was also taken to only release the event’s most exciting details in the final few days.
We take care to let the user know,
that the event is REALLY GONNA HAPPEN REALLY REALLY SOON!!
A couple of messages of appreciation we received:
“Dude, whoever you are!!!!!! I am so freakin stoked - you have no idea!! This is just radddddddd man. Yup”
“我是刚来广州不久的，这将会是我在广州的第一次活动。很感谢你们组织此次活动。也希望以后有更多的活动来丰富大家的生活。”
(I only just arrived in Guangzhou, and this will be my first activity in here. I’m so grateful to you guys for organising this, and hope there would be much of such acitivites in future to make our lives more interesting.)
5. Is fresh, will fly.
A flash mob was a relatively unique and fresh activity in Guangzhou. Our extended event publicity were spread by members, via word of blogs and forum reposts. When our video was finally produced and placed on Youtube, there wasn’t as much buzz. Significant Youtube audience have already been exposed to the no-longer-spectacle of Flash mob Freezes.
6. Credible words from credible people
We had support from some very credible folks at ZhongnanhaiBlog to boost our credibility, which goes with the whole image of being professsionally organised.
7. Venue of choice
This is an event-specific lesson learnt. Well I guess we could’ve picked a less crowded spot in China.
So…what’s next?
Feel free to suggest what we can do in China.
