If there’s one thing the Internet is really good at, it’s organising campaigns.

Look at the recent push to bring back Veronica Mars: fans managed to organise themselves to send 2040 Mars bars, as well as 4,848 Snickers bars, to the offices of the network that cancelled the show. Original, clever, and probably completely without success, though I guess we won’t know till all that chocolate gets delivered. Other TV shows have inspired similar campaigns; see Firefly, Jericho, Farscape, and so on.

Sure, once upon a time, people might have organised letter-writing campaigns, but with the help of the Internet, it’s a lot easier to get people mobilised, as well as to raise awareness.

Another example is the sheer number of petitions posted online - and the number of signatures on them. The Government’s e-petition site alone lead to petitions being raised that gathered thousands of signatures, and though these might not have actually provoked any action, they do at least get read, and responded to.

The thing that made me think about it today was the Blog Like It’s The End of the World meme, organised for tomorrow. Bloggers from around the world (probably primarily America, mind you) will spend June 13th writing their blogs as if there was a zombie uprising occurring. There’s already a list of blogs committed to doing it, but I suspect more will jump on the bandwagon once it actually starts (and I’m considering it myself!).

The odd thing is that this doesn’t appear to be tied into any particular product. Maybe it was inspired by Romero’s forthcoming Diary of the Dead; and if this stunt was being coordinated by the PR team behind that, it’d be genius. There are ways and means of making communities work for your benefit … not many companies seem to have realised that yet, though. But there’s potential there.