When Movie Marketing Goes Wrong: Dead Blackbird Edition

When Movie Marketing Goes Wrong: Dead Blackbird Edition

www.mediabistro.com

though the film won’t be out until 2013, the studio decided to get a head start on its promotion, only of course it bombed spectacularly and the inhabitants of Beebe, AK were the hapless victims. A studio exec, perhaps cowering in fear in some bunker somewhere in the aftermath, tells the BVET, “The stunt was a gross miscalculation. We were trying to help get audiences interested in the remake with a small scare. Unfortunately, the planes dropped the birds over ...

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This sounds a little wrong to me. The governor is being told this was a movie promotion gone wrong, that the bird were supposed to be dropped over N California where they would have died of massive trauma?

Baloney.

Plus, this also doesn't explain the birds over Louisiana, and the 20 miles of dead fish that showed up at the same time.

www.mediabistro.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

if you read the comments under the story you'll see it's BS. bad journalism and bad research...I think the story comes from a fake news site

Look at the comments, most people think this is a load of BS.

Were there not other birds found dead in other areas of the world?

And fish?

to be honest, regarding this entire dead birds falling from the sky i've seen loads of bad journalism

Read some articles and newspapers where they present different opinions as fact
Journalism is no more

" Reverend Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church immediately accused Arkansas of harboring a covert population of homosexuals, thereby incurring the wrath of God. But this morning, a movie studio in California admitted that the scare was part of a poorly conceived promotional campaign for a 2013 remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” www.benningtonvalepress.com...

Im not sure what is more sick , the movie stunt or the baptist church reaction ? WTF is wrong with people ahhh never mind . I just remember what planet im on.

Link to actual write up.

www.benningtonvalepress.com...

Its in California, so what gives?

Surely this cant be real....?

Though the press gives no indication its a spoof site, such as The Onion.

Anyone?

To kill thousands of birds and drop them into a neighborhood would have to be the stupidest publicity stunt ever. Who the hell would support the people who did this by going to their movie.

This notion is just too preposterous. Humans are capable of some stupid things, but this idea is just too bizarre. I also think the answer lies somewhere else.

I still want to know what killed these birds and the fish earlier -- and all the other incidents of dead birds that are cropping up everywhere. I'll believe 2012 before this story of a movie stunt.

reply to post by mother1138


Just......WOW!

Disease, littering, animal cruelty, possible property damage, emotional distress, lawsuits out the yingyang, WTH were they thinking! Residents of Beebe should sue their pants off! The Ark AG should levy fines and criminal violations!

while seemingly incredulous that this would be any type of publicity stunt, remember this happening?

Publicity stunt

People do ridiculously stupid & naive things for "publicity" however I would find it difficult to accept in this case

No, it's not real. The site is a parody/satire site.

Read their guidelines here

Excerpt:

Where possible, try to incorporate characters from the San Narciso universe. They will appear regularly in articles. Or invent characters with a strong ability to recur. We look at this publication as a combination of Garrison Keillor, Thomas Pynchon and The Onion. The fictitious denizens of San Narciso should live and breathe, and drive many of the stories.

Satire works best when it mirrors real life. We began this project because we had no interest in satire stories that dealt with the utterly absurd and fantastic. Examples include interviews with angels who argue the politics of heaven, fantasy creatures, bathroom humor, vitriol, or anything that doesn't look as though it could have come from a newspaper.

Anyone else flash back to the WKRP in Cincinnati Thanksgiving episode? -

"As God as my witness, Travis, I thought turkeys could fly."

This whole story stinks... It reads like an article from the onion. They didn't explain why the birds had trauma. Did they kill them first? Did they die when they tried to drop them from a plane? What about the fish? The article raises more questions than it answers. I think the one thing we can all agree on is birds did fall from the sky, why or how is still up for debate.

Who kills a few thousand birds to promote a movie not slated to be out till 2013? I think something else happned to these birds and this is some sort of cover up. This isnt the first time a mass of birds fell from the sky. Happned last year a few times if I remember correctly.

reply to post by yeahright


Guess it smells so strongly of satire for a reason, eh?

As for the WKRP episode ... that's a classic. Had me in stitches, and still does!