Monday July 9, 2012
A front page article in the WSJ indicates a new version of Run for Your Life. Run for Your Life was formerly a television show starring Ben Gazzara. Now it is a lively obstacle course. Runners pay $87 to duck and dodge make believe zombies (who pay $25 for the privilege of acting out their fantasy).
Talk about thinking out of the box, the organizers of this deal have flanked Facebook…
In times of economic stagnation, folks like to be scared. Whether it is Dracula in the 1930s, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the Exorcist in 1974, or the Walking Dead on cable now, the scarier the better. Social mood determines societal outcomes and here it is on display. This is valuable information for anyone marketing to the public. The Twlight series of books and then movies, the Sookie Stackhouse series that became True Blood, the Walking Dead, we just can't get enough of the ghoulish experience.
Super Heroes were also a result of the extended depressing Depression of the 1930s. The result was the creation of Superman by the late 1930s. America was looking for some sort of fiction escape from the real world that was unable to solve its economic dilemma. what better than a man who flies through the air and can lift cars or railroad locomotives?
Respond to the market and they will come, one just has to be in tune with the social mood of the time.
Professor Elam 
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