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Going Viral

Submitted by Robert Smith on September 18, 2011 - 11:24pm

So this weekend I made the mistake of watching Contagion. The movie was good, featuring a great cast as well. But it got me to thinking about how easily viruses are transmitted and how little we do to prevent them. After the movie was out I noticed a lot of people wouldn't even reach into a bowl for some complimentary packaged mints. I was one of them. I've never really worried about some kind of weird epidemic outbreak even when we had the Swine Flu, Bird Flu, H1N1 or whatever else has been in the news the last couple of years. After seeing the movie (obviously fictional) it made me think a little more about that possibility. Out of curiosity, I decided to see what some of the worst epidemic and pandemic (global) outbreaks have been.

So here are some of the worst disease outbreaks in history and the toll they took on the world's population. Pretty bleak numbers here. Let this serve as a reminder to wash your hands throughout the day.

- The Black Death/Bubonic Plague (1300s) - 75 million

- Smallpox - 300-500 million in the 20th century

- The Great Influenza (1918-1919) - 50 to 100 million

- Malaria - currently kills 2.7 million per year

- AIDS (1981 to present ) - 25 million

But in an effort to not be a total Debbie Downer, I wanted to see how I could give this topic a positive light, and what better way than tie in a few successful viral campaigns. Since I'm on the subject of movie-watching, I thought I'd include some campaigns from the movie industry. If you're working in sports, you can appreciate (and steal) some great ideas that other entertainment-focused industries are using.

So below are a few links to some decent viral campaigns by Hollywood (see a few others here). A lot of these movies are more recent since the viral nature was due in large part to social media. I'm impressed most with Paranormal Activity (grossing about $180 million from a movie with about a $15k budget) and Snakes on a Plane (the fact that anyone would see this movie speaks volumes about the marketing). I've also included The Blair Witch Project because it was a viral campaign before social media was around. The tactics used were different for each campaign (Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch were similar) based on the product, the audience and the goals of the campaign. You can see that these campaigns created a viral environment by keeping these factors in mind when formulating their strategy.