Friday, November 30, 2012

MARKETING STRATEGY: GOING VIRAL

Just like any normal day at home, I surfed the Internet and stumbled upon quite an interesting public service advertising campaign of Metro Trains Melbourne. The campaign has been created to raise public awareness about train accidents. Unlike other similar campaign, the campaign takes advantage of ‘viral communication’ to attract people’ attention and it has actually turned out to be a massive success.


The message of the campaign is reflected upon its viewers through a viral music video. The video is called “Dumb ways to die”, featuring cartoon characters whose lives come to an end because they did something dumb enough to get them killed. At first, the message “Be safe around trains” is unclear but towards the end of the video, people take notice it. At the beginning of the video, “dumb ways to die” vary from “set fire to your hair”, “poke a stick at a grizzly bear”, “eat medicines that’s out of date“, “use your private parts as piranha bait”, etc. but the ending part focuses on the danger when people are being careless around trains: “stand on the edge of a train station platform”, “drive around the boom gates at a level crossing”, “run across the tracks between the platform”. The message is serious but the song doesn’t sound like a long, boring lecture about safety awareness. On the other hand, the song is very catchy, at the same time memorable. I bet everyone is singing along with the song after hearing it and will never forget about the message hidden inside. The characters are also the cutest and funniest I have ever seen in a safety warnings clip!!!! The video has been climbing to the top of every chart from the release date and has reached 1,593,486 shares. So big an impact it has that a website associated with the campaign has been created to educate people about safety around trains: http://dumbwaystodie.com/.
The campaign has created an influential phenomenon when McCann Melbourne made the “Dumb ways to die” video a big success. There is no doubt that the message from Metro Trains Melbourne has been well-received by the public and the number of train accidents will decrease with the existence of the video.

AND FINALLY, HERE IS THE VIDEO:
 
 

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