Virtua Tennis Pigeons Divebomb Wimbledon

Thanks to several readers for pointing to a GameSpot story indicating Acclaim will use spray-painted homing pigeons to advertise Virtua Tennis 2 at this year's Wimbledon tennis tournament. According to Acclaim's marketing director, Larry Sparks, "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." Acclaim are sadly infamous for other desperately outlandish publicity stunts, such as getting proud parents to name their baby Turok and trying to place videogame adverts on gravestones.

Comments

Mission Accomplished (sort of)

[Traderdot]

This achieved exactly what Acclaim wanted. They haven't even let them fly yet and they've already generated lots of free publicity.

Before tasteless pigeon stunt: nobody heard of Virtua Tennis 2.
After tasteless pigeon stunt: lots of people have heard of their game.

Unfortunately, this is likely to be negative publicity. Yes, it's worth a minor laugh but will it really make people want to buy the game? Most likely not. Probably will turn a bunch of people off from buying it.