Viral Marketing Gone Wrong, or Horribly Right?
Like all too many people, the afternoon and early evening hours of October 15th, I was rather worried and obsessed about the status of the Balloon Boy situation.
“Hey, there is a 6 year old kid floating in a homemade balloon over Colorado!”
The earliest utterances of a co-worker in the office (who picked it up on Facebook from a friend posting it) became an afternoon of fitting in work between refreshing my Twitter search feed and resulted in channel hopping when I was home and close to the news channels.
As a mother of two troublesome children only slightly older than Balloon Boy, I could relate all too well to the panic and worry that this own parents could have (would have / should have) been experiencing. I bristled when people criticized their parenting on Twitter because really; the two kids were only playing in their own yard and that the yard had a filled homemade space balloon was only slightly odd. I tried to ignore the calls of a publicity stunt for either Disneys “Up” Movie or the Wife Swap show; after all, if real, then the child could have really been in harm’s way and this story could have had a fatal and tragic ending. (more…)
