“That must have been the prissiest chicken I’ve ever seen.”
Or so I read on the speech-bubble shaped sticker stuck outside a downtown pub. I suppose you had to be there.
Actually, that’s the whole point of MobileMoment.ca-a new website for sharing all those weird and wonderful Toronto moments with the rest of the city. It’s also the Web 2.0 version of a “Sightings” classified-you can post a message on MobileMoment to that anonymous hottie you saw in line at Tim’s.
At least that’s what Koodo Mobile and Samsung are hoping. Mobile moment is a collaborative effort that will attempt to bring Toronto’s citizens a little closer-drumming up buzz for Koodo and Samsung in the process.
Users get started by registering at the MobileMoment site. Then, if users see something they want to share-or have a message for a certain beautiful stranger-they simply text their message to the MobileMoment number. It’s then displayed on the site for all to see-and for all to comment, offer help or advice.
Users can also leave a handwritten version of their message behind using one of the black-and-white speech bubble stickers, so passersby can comment as well-connecting the city in a big, happy way.
It’s an interesting concept, but after attending one launch party, I’m not sure it has legs.
The half-empty room didn’t quite know how to get the “conversation” started, and what ended up on the huge projection of the site were inside comments from groups of friends and a series of Chuck Norris jokes
Nevertheless, on the way out, we were given a stack of the ubiquitous black-and-white MobileMoment stickers so we could leave messages of our own all over the city. I wonder how thrilled the city of Toronto is that MobileMoment is encouraging what’s essentially vandalism.
Or maybe I’m just too old to get it-the campaign is aimed at 18-to-24-year-olds. This is the kind of marketing that could fly on university campuses. But then again, the coveted 18-to-24 market might be a text-happy bunch, but they’re also a socially conscious one. They know when someone is trying to sell them something and they don’t like it.
Unless things have changed in the three years since I graduated, it’s more likely the things are stuck all over university lecture halls with “ADS OFF CAMPUS!” written in them.
It would be heartening to see a site like MobileMoment get off the ground-but I don’t know if all the prissy chicken sightings in the world will help people look past what, at the end of the day, is a very flashy but very obvious marketing tool.
