Viral marketing unleashed

The flu business will probably be ranked amongst the most popular business cases reviewed in Business schools in a few years. Indeed, it has all the characteristics that makes it a businessman dream : it is recurrent (every year), it is viral (self-explanatory really;), it addresses a mass market, it has strong global branding (sras, chicken flu, mexican flue, HxNy, etc...), excellent media coverage, deep impact on public opinions and full support from state governments. This is really much better than the iPhone... but not as good as the subprime crisis -as yet!

Whether the virus is organic or human-engineered, whether it was released or not on purpose, whether a few good businessmen and other policy-makers are riping off the benefits of their investments, whether the mass media are simply dumb or under control, etc... finally have very little importance.

Indeed, in a mass consumption society, what people want, what they really really want is to shop safely! -isn't it ?