Branded Flash Mobs: Moving Toward a Deeper Understanding of Consumers’ Responses to Video Advertising

Ads are no longer unidirectional or one-dimensional but a blend of offline and online techniques designed to directly interact with the community. For many companies, advertising via online platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo has replaced commercials on television altogether. Recently, branded flash mobs have emerged as a popular form of viral advertising. While many branded flash mobs have experienced millions of YouTube views a metric such as view count does not fully indicate the effectiveness of the ad. This netnographic study evaluates viewers’ attitude toward the ad to better understand the effects of branded flash mobs. After examining 2,882 YouTube comments from three virally successful branded flash mob ads, a typology is developed, referred to as the archetype of consumer attitude matrix, to enable academics to formulate research questions regarding branded flash mobs. These archetypes of consumer attitudes to the online ad, in this case branded flash mobs, aid in the assessment of consumer resp...