IE in HK?

Last Friday, I took the afternoon off work so that I could go to the HK Book fair with the missus. Before going though, I needed to have lunch so the missus and I decided to go to Central, more specifically to a restaurant halfway up the hill to Lan Kwai Fong.

On the way back down the hill after lunch, I noticed two people standing next to the pavement fence. They were both holding up different signs. I can't remember exactly what was on the signs but they effectively said "Free high fives". Just as I passed them, a guy literally materialises out of thin air (that's the only explanation for where he could have come from!) with his hand raised. I immediately realised what was happening and, being the good sport that I am, I high fived him (the wuss was wearing gloves!).

If this sounds familiar, then you are probably a fan of Improv Everywhere. I blogged about them in the past and one of their recent pranks was the High Five Escalator which, by all accounts, went down really well. I'm guessing this was the inspiration behind the stunt in Central last Friday but to be fair, I don't actually know if this is the case or if they came up with a similar idea all by themselves.

In any event, there were a couple of reasons why the stunt in Central didn't actually work very well.

For starters, the two people holding the signs were standing next to each other with the high five guy just a little bit behind them. This meant that by the time I saw them, I was almost on top of the guy giving the high five. In fact, if he hadn't jumped in front of me, I would have missed him altogether as I was staring at the signs. Of course, this also raises another problem as people will be startled by the whole thing which may make them more likely to avoid the "crazy" high five guy instead of actually giving him a high five. To be honest, if I hadn't realised what was happening, I might have avoided him as well.

Secondly, the guys holding the signs were all standing on the left hand side of a relatively broad and busy pavement. This meant that a lot of people didn't even see the signs as they were concentrating on navigating the street and avoiding bumping into people. When you factor in the different walking speeds of people, I wonder how many people actually responded to the sign and gave the high five.

Contrast this with the IE version where they have the signs spread apart so that you can easily see them and see the guy doing the high five as well long before you actually get there. This lets people get used to the idea first so that they are ready to give a high five by the time they get to the high five guy.

Also, by being next to an escalator, the IE guys have a captive audience. You know that everyone on the escalator will see the sign - the only question is whether they want to take part or not. This actually has the added benefit of peer pressure - if you see lots of people in front of you giving a high five, then you may be more likely to give a high five as well.

Obviously, an MTR escalator wouldn't work in HK as the stairwell isn't located next to the escalators here. However, a better location would have been the mid-levels escalator. Particularly if you did this during the lunch hour rush, you would have had a huge stream of people all going up the escalator with relatively few people taking the stairs. Furthermore, with the stairs being on the right hand side of the escalator on the way up, it means that the people you will be high fiving will all be standing still and will have plenty of time to see you and your signs before they get to you.

Still, it was interesting to see something like this happen in HK and I hope that they do more of this kinda stuff in future.