Earlier this year, our feeds were flooded with pictures, links and videos of these funny critters showed above. ‘Dumb ways to die’ sounded like some warped reincarnation of Happy Tree Friends if any of you have heard of that disturbingly popular cartoon of the 2000s but it was a pleasant surprise to me as I watched the original iteration.

The ad is essentially a fun mix of everything you would ever want in a viral video (catchy music, funny lyrics, lovable characters) and a relatively grim message, all in a singsong bundle of carnage. It was a PSA released by the Australian government as a way to mitigate the amount of accidents on the metro (that’s their train system for the uninitiated). The result? An unprecedented 21% decrease in accidents on the metro when compared to the same time period last year.

It’s not necessarily a case of something extraordinarily novel, but the execution and appeal of the video was just something that resonated so well within, well, everyone. Kids were attracted, adults found it humorous, I wouldn’t even be surprised if grumpy bosses everywhere got a snicker out of it. It put together the strongest facets of virality and executed it so well.

Building up on that, other companies would just take this as a win and start making their way toward the podium but they took it further. They saw this PSA, something that shouldn’t have profits mixed in its goals, and converted it into something they actually reaped revenues off of. They created campaigns to stimulate user generated content (singing their own karaoke versions of the song and sending it over), syndicated their song over typical media outlets and basically just had a field day with it.

Pushing up the bottom line, entertaining saps like me AND saving people from falling into train tracks? You have my thanks Metro Trains, Australia.

PS: A little article detailing a few of the figures and numbers I hinted on.