Zombie Marketing at the CDC

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) posted a page to its "Emergency Preparedness and Response" blog instructing citizens how to prepare and respond to the zombie apocalypse. It was posted around the 16th of this month, started popping up in social media sites a few days later, and has generated a fair amount of buzz. The page was released without much fanfare, so there's some uncertainty whether it was an intentional, official act of the agency or just a soon-to-be-former-employee goofing around on the site.

The initial reactions seem to have fallen into two categories - amusement and outrage - the latter at the notion that "our tax dollars" are being spent on something so frivolous. For my part, I'm neither terribly amused (it was fairly weak humor, and wouldn't get a second glance but for the site it appeared on) nor terribly outraged (far larger projects have wasted far more tax money, and this is a trifle) .... I'm inclined to be impressed, but have been waiting for more information that I'm beginning to doubt I'll ever see.

As silly or lame as it may seem, this stunt has drawn much attention to a government-operated site that probably hasn't gotten much traffic. I don't expect that the CDC's Emergency Preparedness site ever much attention, and it's likely most people know, or at least expect, that the CDC operates such a Web site, but never really bothered to check it out. And thinking about it now, it's probably a site that a person should visit for their general information - people will respond better to an emergency if they know what to do, but aren't much interested in learning until a situation occurs, and it's too late to prepare.

So in that sense, this little stunt is quite a good use of social media, and if it gets people to visit the site, become aware that it exists, and browse a few articles while they are there, then it should likely be considered a good use of tax dollars as well. The people who are amused would do well to take the CDC a little more seriously, and the people who are outraged would do well to STFU ... but when is the latter not true?

I'd like to follow-up on this note when more information is available - confirmation (hopefully) that this was an intentional marketing gambit and the amount of traffic it created to the CDC's site - but I suspect that won't be disclosed, or if so, it will get less attention than the stunt itself and pass below the radar. So I'm left to guess, and I'd estimate that this was a conscious gambit on some level of the organization, and that the traffic is likely to be quite remarkable compared to the trickle of attention the site normally gets.