The T-Mobile Dance with Britney Spears
Full length version here – simply awesome, almost as good as Barack’s big day!
In my Motivating Without Money sessions i talk about…
“THE C WORD” – Creativity not Compliance!
This sums it up well – if you want to motivate people, help them be creative and watch your productivity soar.
Not even a sign of Britney Spears and it still works
Loading...
Dozens of carefully choreographed individuals executing a pre planned script? Interesting take on creativiy Lee!
When I first saw the advert I was engaged by it in a kind of ‘Beadles About’, ‘You’ve Been Framed’ kind of way. Sure it made me smile – but is that really the best sign of ‘creativity at work?
After a while, as a customer of T-mobile, I started to wonder just what else they were spending my £50 a month contract on.
Too often we accept ’stunts’ as substitutes for meaningful, fulfilling, worthwhile processes that REALLY engage and uplift people. Indeed perhaps we are becoming a culture that accepts this sort of stuff as a welcome diversion from the real world – thousands of commuters passing across that station hall in various states of depression.
progmanager - January 22, 2009 at 9:52 am
I can understand your views Mike, but they are borderline grumpy me thinks.
I wasn’t really bothered about the dancers to be honest but the reactions from the general public were the highlight for me if you look on youtube you can also see interviews after the event one woman says “i was in a bad mood today, I’m not anymore” – I would call that creativity making a difference.
Lee Jackson - January 22, 2009 at 10:02 am
Mike – I see your point but its not that there’s no creativity here, it’s just creativity at an earlier stage than is shown in the video.
Lee – its good to hear that it cheered people up for the day but it was still a short-term solution to the thousands of depressed commuters isn’t it?
Something that starts everyone dancing and makes them dance their commute the next day and the next day and the day after that… now that I’m interested in!
rach - January 22, 2009 at 10:19 am
I agree Rach. That’s why I do my job
Lee Jackson - January 22, 2009 at 10:27 am
I know someone who was one of the dancers in this. If you said to them that it wasn’t creative they would strongly disagree. While the idea may have come from t-mobile’s advertising department, they simply employed someone creative to come up with this. So what you see is someones creative project. It’s just that t-mobile have branded it as they funded it.
Without doubt it lifted peoples days. No maybe it’s not a long term solution to depression, but somehow I don’t think that was what they were going for. But on that point, surely it’s better to do little things than do nothing because you can’t find the big one? But that’s another topic.
Steve - January 22, 2009 at 10:56 am
Cheers Steve, did you dance in it too?!
Lee Jackson - January 22, 2009 at 11:01 am
Just to be clear – of course it is a creative ad – like so many. But where does this kind of corporate creativity get us – really?
Sorry about the grumpiness. How about you read it instead as passion for a deeper take on the real nature of creativity in building a better world. Diversion is easy. Progress is hard. Don’t confuse the two.
progmanager - January 22, 2009 at 12:32 pm