To promote its new reality show “The Colony,” about a group of survivors trying to get by after a deadly pandemic, the Discovery Channel is using Facebook Connect in a new campaign that’s creepy, creative and yes, “viral.” (Yes, cheesy puns about viruses, diseases and infections will abound in this post. Consider yourself warned!)
To see it in action, visit this website and give the application access to your Facebook profile, if you have one. The app will pull information about your Facebook friends, including their names, pictures and where they live, and then uses their information to populate a Facebook-style social networking page with personalized content and updates relating to the fictional “Nuclear flu” pandemic. The result is creepily realistic-so much so that Discovery includes disclaimers on each page about how the site is a fictional simulation and not based on real events.
For example, the first entry is a video post from one of the participants in the Colony TV show, describing how he and his friends were dropped off in a quarantined “safe zone” by government agents, then left to their own devices. Scrolling down, I could see a comment from my uncle about how scared he was now that emergency rooms in his hometown were closed, plus “Missing” alerts on the side of the page for some of my high school friends.
I thought the campaign was an awesome use of Facebook. It strikes just the right balance between being creepy and engaging. There is, however, one design flaw that I think is keeping it from being as infectious as it could be. The website consists of a LONG series of simulated updates that take you from the start of the outbreak through the collapse of American society as we know it. There’s no “Like” or “Share” button to allow you to share the site on Facebook or Twitter until you scroll through all of those updates.
Some diseases actually change the behavior of their hosts to make them more likely to infect others. Have you ever wondered why animals (and people) with rabies suddenly become so fearless and aggressive? It’s actually an adaptation of the rabies virus, which spreads through saliva. Likewise, the nasty little bug that causes toxoplasmosis makes infected mice lose their fear of cats, thus furthering its spread. If you have a strong stomach, see this article for more details and examples.
When you try to create a viral campaign, your goal should be the same- to influence consumer behavior to help your campaign spread further. That means it should be as easy as possible to share, and even people who don’t have 10-15 minutes to scroll through all of those updates should be able to share the campaign on Facebook and Twitter in just a couple of clicks.
I have to say that I agree with Tracy Johnson, a commenter on the Mashable post describing the campaign, who wrote:
“I wish they made the app more obviously “sharable” once you viewed it. I feel like the experience ended after I saw the fake news feed… then because I was curious I went back to see if there was a way to share the information and if you click on the “X number of friends shared this” link there is an option to post to FB or Twitter. If that call to action was a little clearer, this app would rock my world.”
Tags: Facebook, social media, viral marketing