Red Nose DIY dancing – horrible or great?

Underneath the cliched exterior of B&Q’s massive mob lies a major step in B2E2C co-ordinated marketing

I’m saying good. There you go, blog over.

OK, perhaps a little more to flesh this out. On 6^th March Kingfisher DIY retailer B&Q had group dances, flash mob styleee across 330 of its branches in an employee meets consumer hot get together.

Here is the bad bit. They have to call it a flash mob. Flash mobs used to be good, but now they are OVER. Fashion moves with the mob.

Here is the ugly bit. They played up the involvement of a 96 year old employee to drive the PR. It struck me as a bit of a desperate hook. So did the slightly clumsy link between dance and DIY – essentially both are easy to learn. So did the lack of Red Nose paraphernalia in the official video clips I saw (see it below). Would they get away with this if it was Poppies?

Here is the good bit. It worked on so many levels.

B&Q gained kudos for the way in which it employs people of all ages.

The staff seem to have got a genuine buzz out of it. They got to practice dancing together.

Because it is real people, it’s different. Unlike flash mobs – generally – this was engaging. It got store staff talking to customers about more than how to find the sandpaper or where the bathroom aisle is.

It was done in stores, entertainment at POS.

The local press and online viewing figures have been stratospheric.

I saw a comment posted from a marketer in this industry and directed at Kingfisher which read “So, you did something unoriginal, why’s that a reason to crow?”

You need to look a little deeper. Try persuading B&Q staff to dance in stores together before the flash mob became well known? It’s only because they know that ‘spontaneous’ group dancing is a regular activity that they can pull off a co-ordinated event nationwide. And they did. And it worked.