Hasta La Creative!

Here’s a nice case study of some classic hoaxvertising, where a leaked film taken by a supposed woman from Rio, showed a “giant pigeon” that looked a lot like a Dodo. An animal that’s been extinct since the seventeenth century. The advertising agency NBS created the idea for NGO Alternativa Terrazul and aims to attract people’s attention to a serious matter – the preservation of endangered species.

The agency created a fake profile at Facebook of a young Brazilian, which, during a trip to Costa Rica, would have captured images of a Dodo bird, considered extinct since the seventeenth century. She published the polemic video in her social network’s profile. Within days, the film was shared by thousands of people, have had millions of views and created a great discussion on the topic: was it real or fake? The response was overwhelming, people debated it online and in the evening news, on talk shows, at work in cafés, even in the scientific community.

A reveal was then posted a few days later, this new video confirmed that the video was fake. The film then invited people to invest the same amount of energy they had for discussing the issue into helping species that still have a chance of being saved at the “Almost a Dodo” website (http://www.almostadodo.com), where people can support organizations working to save species in danger of disappearing like the Dodo.