I guess I should give a warning that the following video shows a bunch of cartoon-jelly-bean-people dying in a variety of ways, but I think it’s hard to think of it as dark as it should seem when the little guys follow their demises with a lighthearted dance to upbeat music.

I find it difficult to discuss the notion that an organization is engaging in “viral marketing” unless they have already shown they have the capacity to do so by making a campaign viral – and Metro Trains (a railway network in Melbourne, Australia) has definitely done that. Last week, visitors of the YouTube charts were treated to the clever black comedy music video above, “Dumb Ways to Die”. The video is about exactly what the title suggests; a series of really stupid ways to die (ex: using a clothes dryer as a hiding place, sell both your kidneys on the internet, pressing big red buttons).

Before you know it, the video is talking about the last and “dumbest” ways to die – stand on the edge of a train station platform, drive around the gates at a railway crossing, running across the tracks. You probably don’t realize until the music fades that you’ve just finished watching a rail safety message, one that effectively communicates that being stupid around trains is just as idiotic as eating a tube of super glue, among other things. “The aim of this campaign is to engage an audience that really doesn’t want to hear any kind of safety message,” said the executive director of the marketing firm behind the video, McCann. So, quite brilliantly, they found a way to get their attention through creating a charming piece of  web content with enough entertainment value that viewers would spread it for them.

I think the biggest takeaway from this is that perhaps “viral marketing” isn’t about making a message viral, but attaching a message to a whole new product (high-quality web content that will go viral). At the time I’m writing this, the video has over 27 million views; it also reached as high as #6 on the global iTunes charts.  Why? I would think it’s because people love this music video and song, not because they love hearing about rail safety.