Bird Brained Advertising Takes To The Air
Games publisher Acclaim has taken advertising to new heights by training a team of branded pigeons to fly over Wimbledon to raise awareness of its new tennis game.
The bird brained PR stunt will see a team of 20 specially trained pigeons branded with harmless water-based paint in an attempt to turn them into flying advertisements for the new Virtua Tennis 2 game. The birds will fly in and out of the tournament on a daily basis before returning to their secret London base for re-painting.
Commenting on the initiative, Larry Sparks, vice president of international marketing at Acclaim, said: “The Virtua Tennis 2 pigeon marketing campaign is highly targeted as it brings awareness of the game directly to tennis enthusiasts. The Wimbledon tournament is famous for the occasional descent by pigeons onto centre court, but our advertising pigeons are trained to go straight for the fans and flap their logos in front of them.”
Advertising on pigeon wings is the latest in a long line of stunts that has seen advertisers turn to increasingly novel and bizarre ways to connect with consumers. Last year ambient advertising group, Dogvertise, launched its first pan-European campaign to promote the new Sony Ericsson T300 mobile phone with teams of branded dogs (see Advertising Goes To The Dogs With New Campaign). More recently Cunning Stunts invited models in coastal resorts around the country to wear a temporary tattoo on their bottoms to raise awareness of FHM‘s High Street Honey 2003 competition (see Cunning Stunts Gets Cheeky With FHM Ad Campaign).
Acclaim: www.acclaim.com
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