WPVI’s Talking Turkeys Make The Best Of A Bad Situation

Turkeys using Zoom for a virtual meeting? Hey, even gobblers need to practice social distancing.

A new 60-second promo from WPVI, the ABC O&O in Philadelphia, features turkeys on a zoom call to promote the station’s Thanksgiving Day celebration show.

Why is that news?

Because since 1966, WPVI has been broadcasting Philadelphia’s Thanksgiving Day parade, but found out on Tuesday the parade’s been canceled, due to new restrictions put in place by the city banning large public gatherings through February 2021.

A Philly tradition nixed for this year. So how do you get the word out on short notice?

Talking turkeys on a Zoom call, of course.

Where’d that idea come from?

“We were on a department head call a few weeks back,” said Mike Monsell, WPVI’s vice president of marketing, “and our VP of sales said: ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if we got a bunch of turkeys on a zoom call’? It was said as a joke, but then we’re like, hey … maybe that could be a thing?”

“I wrote the script and directed the voice session, and Troy Bauer, a WPVI producer, edited the video.”

“Tim Fenstermacher, our assistant creative services director, was our ‘casting director’. He found us all the turkeys from stock footage.”

So where do you find people who can talk turkey? Hire voice actors to do the turkey talking.

“When we have an idea like this,” said Monsell, “we rarely decide the platform early on. We just execute the idea and then determine the best way to get it in front of people. This ultimately made it on TV, and also on social.”

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