A lot of us who were not activating new phones (or explaining network disruptions) over the holidays are just getting back into the swing of things. In the spirit of easing back into the run-up to CES, here’s a shout-out to T-Mobile USA for its holiday video, “(There’s No Place Like) Home For The Holidays.”
The video was posted to YouTube on Dec. 5, but I didn’t see it until AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher posted it yesterday. Like Swisher, I wasn’t sure if I liked the video or was just freaked out by it. It does make you wonder what T-Mobile was thinking in paying Hollywood director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and musical director Paul Mirkovich, not to mention the singers and so forth in making this happen.
But after looking at it again and (spending way too much time) seeing how it was made, I give it a “Like.” The surprise performance of the classic song by a wonderfully choreographed flash mob of women at the Woodfield Mall in the Chicago area is astounding.
In the end, it’s kind of bittersweet. It was made before the final nail in the coffin with regard to AT&T’s bid to acquire the company – that is to say, before AT&T announced it was pulling the plug on its proposal to acquire T-Mobile.
T-Mobile’s future is uncertain, but its identity is not going away via an absorption by AT&T. I would hazard a guess that T-Mobile, while it’s been losing customers, is not in such dire straits that it couldn’t afford to pay someone to produce that video.
What’s done is done, and we can enjoy one last bright spot from T-Mobile from 2011. Here’s to hoping it has a new game plan for 2012 and that its promotions along the lines of “Magenta Saturday” will add up to a lot of green.