The Feral / Birds vs Humans

, , 18 Comments

Imagine a world without Who The Bloody Hell Are They?

Birds vs Human, you’ve got my attention.

Two weeks ago I received a rather cryptic email:

Hey Jerry,

We have been trying to get in touch with you for sometime now. The
situation is thus: there is a struggle taking place between Birds and
Humans and your kinds needs you.

You have been chosen because of your unparalleled expertise in the
Aussie music scene. Your kind needs your delivery address so we can
send you 2 x vital (and entertaining) packs and give you the
opportunity to do your bit for the cause.

You’re under no obligation and you can always send us a message if
you’d like to opt out at any point.

The Feral
http://twitter.com/birdsvshumans

I replied saying I don’t take postal submissions anymore, assuming it’s someone wanting to send in a cd for review, and promptly forgot about it.

About an hour ago, a woman came to my office and delivered a metal box to my desk. She did not introduce herself before walking out. I opened the box and inside was a birds nest, some eggs (not sure if they’re real?), some polaroids, and a message in a scroll. Needless this was a WTF moment of the day for me. I checked the link that was in the scroll: www.birdsvshumans.com.au/nogigs, more cryptic message. According to this, I shall expect another package soon, and something will happen 12 October.

photo

Even though the whole thing has given me some sort of Blair Witch vibes to it, I applaud them for their promotion initiative. Whoever they are has put a lot thought, effort and attention to detail into this, including the photos of bands whothehell.net blogged recently on the customised flash movie. It reminds me of similar Alternate Reality Game marketing done by 42 Entertainment for the The Dark Knight movie.

I’m looking forward to the next package, and if it is a band, I hope they’re good.

 

18 Responses

  1. Matt Hickey

    October 6, 2009 12:51 pm

    This is insane, but great! Talk about effort.

    Also, I love how willing Jerry was to give up his postal address to a freak email suggesting humans needed him to conquer birds…

    Reply
  2. Sophie Benjamin

    October 6, 2009 4:34 pm

    I did a bit of fooling around with the url.

    birdsvshumans.com.au/noculture is Kluster.
    birdsvshumands.com.au/nofashion is Yen Magazine
    birdsvshumans.com.au/noart is Monster Children
    birdsvshumans.com.au/nocreativity is The Cool Hunter
    birdsvshumans.com.au/noblogs is MuMbrella

    Anyone else got ideas for URL sneakiness?

    Reply
  3. Dave Carter

    October 7, 2009 11:48 am

    Hey Jerry,

    so – the domain is registered to a Suzette Muir nee Mackenzie who, after a couple of minutes of Google stalking, was probably a campaign / account manager with Wow Rapp Collins – a New Zealand marketing firm and now may be working for cleanerclimate.com.

    Wonder if this has anything to do with the copenhagen summit?

    The domain was registered through a sole-trader ABN, set up quite recently (July 09) – probably for the purpose of running this campaign. ABN is registered to Neutral Bay.

    Fairly wide ranging campaign taking in a number of music blogs – possibly others… also not just restricted to bloggers – they’re trying to get twitter trends as well… http://birdsvshumans.com.au/A8CB0E8/

    I’m sure someone can figure the rest out from there.

    Reply
  4. Matt Hickey

    October 7, 2009 12:26 pm

    Ha! Dave Carter P.I.
    Nice work there. Yeah, I’m beginning to think this isn’t a band or even specific to music given the varied media that’ve been contacted.

    Reply
  5. Dave Carter

    October 7, 2009 6:54 pm

    Last point – look at the key phrases:

    Imagine a world without…

    Your kind needs you…

    /nogigs
    /noculture
    /nofashion
    /noart
    /noblogs
    /nocreativity

    sounds like the end of civilisation as we know it.

    Could be a movie, could be a climate change campaign, probably not a band.

    Whatever it is this is an Australia specific campaign so might want to think about who the key players are in online, digital and viral marketing in Aus?

    Reply

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