Sony Goes Viral With 'Thriller'

When Sony BMG wanted to work up some excitement for the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” a conventional campaign using the reclusive artist didn't look like a winner. So the label went the guerrilla route, staging “impromptu breakouts” of the "Thriller" zombie dance at locations including the London Underground and posting them on YouTube, reports the New York Times. 

The dance has been repeated in a Copenhagen train station and outside the Sydney Opera House, and the videos have been seen more than a million times. But that's peanuts compared to the amateur video of 1,000-plus orange-suited Filipino prison inmates performing the dance; that clip has been viewed more than 11 million times. (More Thriller stories.)