The group, whose exploits arise from the nexus of street theater and wireless connectivity that also gave rise to the organized-mob happenings of the past few years, most certainly influences -- and is influenced by -- marketing. Their recent impromptu performances have inspired at least two ad campaigns I've seen in the past two months.
Improv Everywhere is, for lack of a better phrase, a group of impresario/auteurs who create theatre in situ, or in their words "a prank collective causing scenes of chaos and joy in public places." They use the web, cell phones, etc. to coagulate people into organized mobs -- an oxymoron, of course -- to create large theatrical events in subways, supermarkets, parks, malls, specialty stores and just about any social space, using actors for smaller actions and just about anyone who shows up for the bigger events.
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Some examples of the dozens of events they have staged since 2001: one piece had a bunch of people converging on an Abercrombie & Fitch store and doffing their clothes. They got kicked out after a while. Another time they put up a sidewalk booth in Aspen, Colo., whose population is 90-something percent white, with a sign, "Meet a Black Person." There was a black person in the booth greeting passersby. Another involved hundreds of people simply freezing for five minutes on cue during rush hour at Grand Central Station. That one's amazing to see. And see them you can, at their web site, which I'll not post here because they aren't paying me. Though if they were to offer me money to promote them, I would consider it.
On Jan. 10, the group will stage its annual no-pants subway ride. For that, hundreds of people will converge at a central Manhattan location, take off their pants and descend to ride the subway. Seriously. I'm thinking of doing that one and videotaping Improv Everywhere videotaping it, which I suppose would make me a usurper. But I'd have to ask my wife how my legs are looking these days. I noticed from the video that most of the people who did it last year had nice legs. Even in January.
Anyway, the point of all this is that I have begun seeing ads that are quite clearly informed by the clever guerilla happenings Improv Everywhere specializes in. I saw a recent commercial for a supermarket chain: the opening shot has people shopping. Suddenly one shopper bursts into song. Then another does. Soon onlookers watch in amazement as several shoppers perform what appears to be a musical number.
That was exactly -- not precisely, mind you, but exactly -- what Improv Everywhere's "Grocery Store Musical" entailed: Actors -- "agents" in IE argot -- posed as shoppers and staff in a Bronx grocery store. One of them burst into song about, I think, a piece of fruit. Then seconds later another shopper joined in, followed by a stock boy. Other shoppers watched in amazement. Some laughed, others just gawked in what might have been horror.
Another called someone to tell them about it. I wonder whether Verizon's campaign in which a subscriber is followed by masses of Verizon employees constitutes an Improv Everywhere lift, or whether both are mining the same obsession with digital connectivity, community. Improv Everywhere actually did stage a happening in which hundreds of "agents" showed up in a park and were instructed by founder Charlie Todd to choose one pedestrian that all of them would follow.
Probably the bigger lesson is that humans implicitly need to be around other people, not just their avatars, screen names or digital embodiments on Facebook. There's only so much online social community.
The fact that Improv Everywhere regularly gets hundreds of people willing to take off their shirts in an Abercrombie & Fitch store, or go pantless on the subway in January probably says as much about people's desire to stand out, physically, as the group's own chutzpah in organizing these things. It couldn't have happened before cell phones and the web. But maybe it wouldn't have anyway.