• by Les Luchter , Yesterday

April Fool’s Day arrived some six months early as The Travel Agency, a New York City cannabis retailer, had media outlets as well as consumers debating whether or not carrier pigeons were being used for same-day pot deliveries.

The stunt began Oct. 3, with a photo-filled press release announcing a pilot Cannabis Carrier Pigeon Program, which was “sending pigeons fitted with mini-backpacks to deliver cannabis across the city.” Each backpack could hold up to one gram of product, the release added.

To be sure, media outlets were largely skeptical about the news, but BrooklynEagle.com for one did add that “in the early years of the 20th century, carrier pigeons were used by New York City newspapers, the military and even criminals, who used the birds’ amazing sense of direction and homing instinct in schemes involving blackmail and drug smuggling.”

“We are a travel agency, but one that specializes in journeys of a different kind,” the retailer’s CMO, Chesen Schwethelm explains to Marketing Daily, “Of course, a travel agency would explore all modalities of travel, carrier pigeons being one.”

Also, she says, “we’re very much a New York born-and-bred business, which has a lot to do with the campaign. The pigeon is an unsung city hero, a little icon that is underrated.”

The press release was backed with a series of videos on both organic and paid social media “showing consumers what training carrier pigeons for cannabis would look like,” Schwethelm says. (View examples here, here, here and here) “We do have to instruct the customers to keep their windows open,” says one of the pigeon handlers. “You know the secret” to fast delivery, reveals Lilly, a real Travel Agency “budtender,” in another: “No traffic.”

The social was backed with in-store signage.

This created a viral buzz, according to The Travel Agency, with “a 10x spike in social engagement, more than 2 million views, and comment sections and thought-pieces flooded with New Yorkers debating whether the program was real, possible, or simply a stoner fantasy.” A single report from Fox 5’s “Good Day New York” garnered over a million and a half TikTok views, Schwethelm says. The news segment took the news seriously, although one of the hosts followed with “I think it’s a scam.”

The “scam” officially ended a week after it began with a post from The Travel Agency announcing the end of what it had dubbed “Project Pigeon.” A second press release explained that the test flights had been designed “to break through cannabis’ restrictive advertising barriers and spark conversation, as well as satisfy New Yorkers’ collective demand for faster cannabis delivery.”

The campaign had been launched to drive use of The Travel Agency’s actual improved same-day delivery service, with the goal of driving traffic to the retailers’ delivery landing page. Schwethelm says it succeeded, with traffic up 400% since the campaign’s launch.

One aspect of the original press release wasn’t far from the truth. It said that professional pigeon trainers and on-set animal safety staff had overseen the supposed test flights -- and, in reality, all video and photo shoots, according to the second release, were “crafted in collaboration with licensed pigeon handlers, their owners, and SOS Safety On Sets Animal Services.” In addition, The Travel Agency made a charitable donation to the Wild Bird Fund, which supports rescue and rehabilitation efforts for New York’s avian community.

Another part of the hoax may also come true.

“People are obsessed with these little red backpacks,” Schwethelm says, “so we're exploring possibly being able to sell them in-store.”