From the Web to the Streets...

Ever wondered what it would be like to be a part of a mass pillow fight? How about a bubble battle? Or a capture the flag game? Well, the folks at Newmindspace have made it all possible.

Their most recent event took place two weeks ago in Union Square, and what was their sole source of promotion? Word-of-mouth social networking. This is the second year in a row that the event has been held. It is reported that over 2,000 people were in attendance. All the buzz was generated mostly through MySpace and Facebook (where the event was listed and garnered 1,715 attendance confirmations), which then led to numerous diggs and generated mass commentary on the event webpage. This, in turn, led to mainstream publicity, most notably NPR.

However, this event not only got me thinking about the possibilities for event promotion through social networking, it also made me consider just how many opportunities this kind of event can generate for more effective advertising off the web. Think about it. This type of event is just begging for sponsorships (albeit, newmindspace has no advertising and runs their website solely off of donations). In addition to that, it is bringing a large, niche audience to one place for a specific event which I think lends itself perfectly to the implementation of some outdoor and guerilla advertising. With all these ideas within the realm of possibility, don't you think it's not long before corporations begin buying into "event advertising" and start organizing their own event promotions online?

If you can't visualize it, just take a look at the video below. That will give you an idea of the environment Newmindspace has created. It's definitely something worth thinking about.