Viral Video Lessons: PBS’s Visualization of Dominos Delivery Routes

PBS’s America Revealed, a series exploring the systems that power America, attached a GPS tracker to a pizza delivery bike messenger to visualize “the delivery end of a vast and complicated machine”- the Dominos supply chain. The short video above is part of the Food Machine episode, where host Yul Kwon travels across the food supply chain, offering a detailed look at the system and its externalities- industrial agriculture, farmers markets, prevalence of corn, colony collapse disorder, water costs, rising obesity, etc…

Youtube Analytics for America Revealed: Pizza Delivery | PBS UK

I first learned of the video from Anderson 360. But a Google search quickly revealed it had been making the Internet rounds after being posted by the World’s Best Ever and Laughing Squid. Bon Appétit, Gizmodo, Huffington Post, Daily Mail, Gothamist, Digital Trends, CNet, Grub Street New York, Chart Porn are just a few of the 100+  blogs that picked up the story. While I’m still not sure how I feel about the Dow-sponsored series, the spread of the video offers some interesting lessons for how to make the complexities of the food supply chain interesting and engaging to a wider audience:

• The blogosphere loves quirky visualizations and videos.
• Reaching influencers , like Laughing Squid, is key to making a story go viral.
• Reaching new audiences, means finding more culturally relevant and engaging storytelling approaches- you have to meet people where their interests are.
• Releasing short clips of long content on multiple platforms, like the various PBS websites this video is posted on, makes it easier for people to find and share.

For examples of Food+Tech Connect posts that went viral check out the Carbs Are Killing You infographic, Ramen Data: From Mouth to Anus, and Care For Some Human Cheese.