MOBILE...ITY

I didn’t know the meaning of a flash mob till two weeks when I saw it live. A flash mob is a group of people who agree to meet in the city center with the sole purpose of performing a dance in synchrony. And usually, these people do not know each other. So technically, it was a semi flash mob, organized by Nokia.

It’s 2 p.m. in Nairobi at Kencom. I see a group of  about 25 men and women dancing as I approach. A mob has already surrounded them and are watching the spectacle.  The girls are in tight blue track suits printed Nokia and heels. Of course.

They were promoting the new Nokia Asha phone. Now that’s marketing! I mean, Nokia blocked Kencom! They had a caravan with a speaker, the works. Their exit from the event was a scene from the movie Fast and Furious. The heelclad vixens jumped on the Harley Davidsons. It looked awesome! The torque was a symphony in itself, and they knew it; they revved for about 10 minutes before they finally left.

The whole affair lasted about 20 minutes; short and to the point. Speaking of points, they get them for originality (people in Kenya have just gotten the hang of flash mobs, so it’s original here) and these guys BLOCKED KENCOM! No buses were moving. Very cool! Points for execution.

This comes up head to head against Huawei’s new Huawei Device Ascend P1 advertisement. 

An old man dressed in pure white from head to sandal wearing a flowing white toga and holding an ancient compass. He looks like something out of Greek mythology, or how you think Galileo would look. He looks into the distance, across a vast plain, where a white horse stands. He drops the compass. The horse begins to run. They meet in a titanic, brilliant clash of light and a phone emerges: a Huawei. The screen flashes ‘Beauty meets brains’. End. Genius. Simply genius!

LICENCE TO DRINK

There are 4 types of chemical bonds:

• Ionic bond
• Covalent bond
• Polar bond
• James Bond 

Let’s concentrate on James bond. The latest movie Skyfall which is 23^rd of its series, is coming out this November. What you didn’t know is you will not hear his signature line anymore; the ‘shaken not stirred’ one. Now, he will say Heineken. Yes, Heineken the green-bottled Dutch beer. I was as surprised as you; the legendarily suave ladies’ man will actually drink beer. Alas! Could it be that James Bond is an ordinary bond – err, man, just like you and me?

Before you get angry that this Bond is now drinking beer, there are marketing/advertising and production reasons behind this partnership. In previous movies, the Bonds were so smooth that even when 5 goons are after him and a building is exploding behind him, he still has time to open the car door for a lady. This generation’s Bond, Daniel Craig, is a man’s man, not a ladies’ man. Compared to Pierce Brosnan, he is not as easy on the eye. He’s rough and tough. When he drink’s a man’s man drink, a beer, it’s believable.

I feel that with this partnership, Heineken has upgraded itself from being just a beer to being the  smoothest, badassest beer (drunk by the smoothest, badassest man). Its competition, Guinness, whose current slogan is ‘Come drink at the table of men’ will be in trouble after Skyfall premieres, simply because Bond is drinking Heineken; all men on the planet want to be James Bond (and all the ladies just drool and drop at his feet), so they are going to drink whatever he is drinking.

For a long time Heineken has sponsored sports; first Liverpool Football Club , then the UEFA Champions League which is a huge success. We are talking about the guys who brought Usain Bolt on as a hype man in last season’s final match between Chelsea and Bayern Munich. They should bring Daniel Craig this time. They have gone a step further, a step larger still, by choosing a universally popular far-reaching platform: the world’s longest-running movie franchise (James Bond just turned 50 on Bond Day, October 5^th). Heineken is branching out from traditional sporting sponsorship to entertainment industry, with one swift, well-calculated move. It is, quite simply, brilliant. I love it.

Just because Heineken positioned itself strategically with James Bond, today I give Heineken a ten over ten. The basic moral of this post is, positioning in a new market must be strategic and properly thought out.

As soon as I learned this information on a Friday afternoon, I promptly walked into a classy bar and did my best James Bond impersonation for the female waiter who quickly approached. In a charming, Bond-like manner, I lifted one eye brow and asked for a Heineken. She didn’t even notice that we were in my own movie, License to drink.