We'd be lying if we claimed to be anything short of disappointed with the revelation of who and what is behind the 'Birds vs Humans' viral influencer campaign. But after the initial letdown, we've decided the effort is one worth noting for its potential if not its outcome.
Alfred Hitchcock once said, "Give them pleasure. The same pleasure they feel when they wake from a nightmare." It's unlikely that Hitch had cross-media marketing in mind when he said it, but it seems fitting in looking at Birds vs Humans (for reasons beyond the fowl parallels) to allow his words to soak. The campaign rollout was cryptic, mysterious, and grounded in something quite unsettling. Sadly, that's where the principle loses its thread. Waking fails to reach what could be described as pleasure. It is, at best, no longer scary.
Here's how things unfolded.
On October 8, 2009, Jawbone.tv ran a story about what we assumed was a tripped-out influencer viral campaign for a horror or sci-fi movie called 'Bird vs Humans'. That ran in our quick-post news section, and on October 10, someone calling himself 'the Feral' left a comment on that story, indicating "thank you, Jawbone. Your kind appreciates your help. Continue to be watchful and stay alert ... The Struggle between birds and humans is about to begin." The Feral then planted a couple of links to other sites that had unearthed a little more about the origins of the mystery.
One of the sites was Who the Bloody Hell (www.whothehell.net), which received a metal box containing a birds nest, some eggs (unclear as to whether or not they were real), some polaroids of what look like pagan rituals or zombie raves in the woods, and a message in a scroll, saying "your kind needs you" and pointing to - in the case of Who the Bloody Hell - www.birdsvshumans.com.au/nogigs (the www.birdsvshumans.com.au part is common to the other recipients, but the url extensions seem to be customized to the one on the receiving end ... www.birdsvshumans.com.au/notalent/ was sent to modularpeople.com/blog, for example).
Furthering the intrigue, all of the messages asserted that something else was going to happen on October 12 (today). As you can imagine, we were positively giddy with anticipation.
So compelling was the setup that even AWOL Monk (awolmonk.blogspot.com), a counterculture blog with blatant disdain for mainstream media, claimed to have deciphered things back on the 8th of October, but agreed to keep it quiet: "... by yesterday afternoon i knew who was behind the viral campaign without still being fully aware what product exactly this elaborate slew was being deigned to launch using an army of underground social media hipsters like myself integrally tied to the gutter zeitgeist as far afield as berlin to sydney. ... i have agreed not to destroy the campaign and traded off our cooperation but can confirm as we all know it is a heinously sexy viral campaign to launch… something. ... perhaps on monday [the eggs] begin to hatch?" (read the full AWOL monk post here).
Well, today arrived, and although the eggs didn't do diddly, the gig is up. When we visited www.birdsvshumans.com.au, we saw that the message had changed, with a link added. Facebook.com/5Seeds took us to a tab on a facebook page with some games for 5 Seed ... Australian cider made by Lion Nathan. Man, what a bummer.
Further confirming the flatline termination point, that final October 12 delivery made its way out to the hipster influencers, including AWOL monk who ran this post: "today the second delivery wave occurred in the intermedia marketing campaign which was publicly revealed through the complete usurpment of media channels by lion nathan's campaign for their toohey's extra dry cider brand : 5 seeds."
So there you have it. All that potential, and Birds vs Humans is hocking cider and terminating on a facebook page. Sadly, this is the same abrupt ending that the Lynx/Axe 'Party Across the Internet' campaign employed ... maybe this is a tracking request made by clients, but simply terminating a grand illusion or even playful cross-media experiment on what is arguably the most popular lowest common denominator on the Internet leaves a bad taste in the mouth that not even dingo cider can wash away.
Still, a reluctant tip of the hat is in order to Lion Nathan and the creatives behind this undertaking at Holler Sydney. It's a monumental evolution from traditional alcohol marketing - for whatever that's worth - and we're sure much was left on the conceptual table in order to get this into production.
Hopefully, at the very least, the campaign can serve as a lesson of the good, the bad, and the disappointing, and encourage some projects with a little more back-end meat on the bone (imagine the impact of this sort of cross-media front end deployed with a film like 'Paranormal Activity').
Read some of the original Birds vs Humans influencer posts in their entirety at the following links:
http://awolmonk.blogspot.com/2009/10/truth-about-birds-vs-humans.html
http://whothehell.net/archives/6253
http://www.modularpeople.com/blog/?p=802
