Obviously, comparing the spread of ideas with the spread of viruses is nothing new - Seth Godin and many others have done it already.
However, often by quick readers, this is reduced to digital ways of spreading ideas - through technology, the internet, and more recently social media. And while we may all be aware that ideas spread through a population in an offline way too, this phenomenon has rarely been more accurately described as in this recent study by two finance professors who analyzed the spread of a “bank run” in India. Indeed, when fear broke out that a local bank would go bankrupt, many consumers fled to the bank to withdraw their money. However, not all consumers.
Trying to answer the question what made certain consumers run on the bank and others not, the study used technological ways (a.o. Google Earth) to describe the pattern in which the fear spread. Turned out it spread like … a virus: physical proximity being the main carrier.
Once again points out the need to know and manage the way in which these “memes” spread. Anybody knows an epidemiologist who wants to work in advertising?
