I have a longstanding interest in the challenges of creating infectious action. This is the theme of a class that I've been involved in teaching at the d.school for several years now, which Diego of Metacool fame and I started, and has included Debra Dunn, Michael Dearing, and this year, Perry Klebahn as leaders of the teaching team at various times. This is also a central theme in the piece that Huggy Rao and I recently published in the McKinsey Quarterly on the Institute for Health Improvement's 100,000 lives campaign. And I have especially learned a lot from the folks at Mozilla and their masterful attempts to spread the Firefox browser through viral campaigns (check out the latest stuff, they are taking open source marketing to the next level in their Impact Mozilla campaign).
Just yesterday, however, I was sent an email that contains one of the most impressive viral tools I've ever seen. It is from the people at Moveon and is campaign tool for Obama, and I realize that many readers may not support Obama. But my focus here isn't on plugging any campaign (this isn't political blog, and I stay away from political opinions here), is it is on the genius of this as a tool to send a viral message. You can customize it to create news video that blames any person for not voting, and thus costing Obama the election. Here is my video and you can see how I am blamed for Obama's loss. You can customize it and send to anyone (note when you get to the end there is a place to send the video to anyone you want.)
Check it out. I think it is brilliant as viral tool, but it is also kind of scary because it provides more evidence that you can't believe anything that you see and hear. And it provides evidence that there are some damn smart geeks out there!
LOL! Prof. Sutton, looking forward to seeing you soon (after the election). I am attending Customer-Focused Innovation at Stanford Nov. 9-14. Looking forward!
Posted by: LivePaola | October 24, 2008 at 11:46 PM
I blogged about this last night. (See http://www.kchristieh.com/blog/?p=1113) It was scary / funny at the same time, and made so much of an impact that I whipped out my absentee ballot and filled it in right away! I also forwarded the email to a bunch of friends, who will hopefully forward it on until it starts getting to people who might find a reason not to vote.
Doesn't this all make you wonder what amazing things the 2012 campaign will bring?
I can't wait until Nov. 5th...when I can stop being so polite to neighbors and friends who are voting differently on Prop. 8 and for the President!
Posted by: Kathy | October 24, 2008 at 11:25 PM