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

Bandwidth thieves

[metalslinger]

Hey stop stealing our bandwidth for our ip over carrier pigeons!

Stupid idea

[RealityMogul]

People are really going to buy your products when you send filthy birds to fly in potential customers faces and take a shit on their head.

Why don't you feed them non-digestable pellets with the Acclaim logo on them too.

Re:Stupid idea

[RealityMogul]

Are you sure? I thought we switched shitting on employees and shareholders for the last couple years.

Wow...

[psyco484]

I can't help but think this will backfire horribly for them. Picture a pigeon hovering over some unfortunate person. Now picture the person looking up just in time for the pigeon to drop a little present and for them to see the advertising...sure it's memorable, but now this person is going to think about birds crapping on them whenever they see the name Acclaim.

Maybe this isn't too likely, but hey, it could happen. And honestly, couldn't they just be paying the game's staff more?

I wonder

[aridhol]

Will Acclaim be responsible enough to use a "bird-friendly" paint? Make sure those fumes don't damage them. Be sure that the paint is non-toxic, so the birds don't absorb something they shouldn't. And be sure to collect and clean every bird.

In short, I don't think they should be doing this. Maybe the SPCA or PETA should be supervising this.

Acclaim..no such thing as bad publicity...

[Bonewalker]

If this is true, Acclaim continues on with its firm belief that there is no such thing as bad publicity.

In fact, I think maybe it is not true, but some crazy, wacked out advertising genius/demento thinks up all these bizarre advertising schemes, then releases that Acclaim will be using them, just to get the free bad press that goes with them...all the while, they have no intention of ever actually pulling these shenanigans.

Pure genius...free pub.

Acclaim's "Marketting"

[Elwood P Dowd]

Apparently getting a good ranking in GameSpy's "25 dumbest moments in gaming" just goaded them on.

... tasteful?

[sporty]

This is not at all tasteful.

1. It's acceptable if a bird or two comes by and decides to do whatever during the event, on its own volition. It's something you have to live with when playing outdoors.

2. This is clearly, clearly, an intentional act that may or maynot disrupt the event.

3. Couldn't a rented plane be just as effective without taking what was once a wild animal and training it to do something that it naturally wouldn't do? No, I'm not a fan of circuses either. It'd be tasteful too. Hell, do one of those neat sky writting things.

4. Companies do "normal" advertising targeted at events. I.e. you don't see ads for tampons at hockey events but you'll see golf equipt ads during golf events. Hrm...

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.

Missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

No, their advertising schemes aren't to name people Turok, deface tombstones, or divebomb Wimbledon.

They are still using the same old marketing scheme - get people talking about them by pretending to have a really weird marketing scheme.

It's meta marketing.