Dance (Life's for Sharing)

Why it works

On the morning of 15 January 2009, music came over the loudspeakers at London's Liverpool Street station, a single commuter started to dance, and within moments some 350 dancers hidden in the rush-hour crowd were moving in unison before melting away again. Ten hidden cameras filmed it, and the next evening the footage aired as a three-minute solo spot during Celebrity Big Brother on Channel 4. It is studied as an early template for the staged "real event" ad: one stunt designed from the outset to be TV commercial, news story and online video at once, launching T-Mobile's "Life's for sharing" platform. By Saatchi & Saatchi's count it won eight Lions at Cannes 2009, two of them Gold, and it was named commercial of the year at the British Television Advertising Awards. T-Mobile's advertising manager later told Marketing Week that store footfall hit a record, up 16% year on year, and online orders rose more than 20%.