"Man, this unpaid internship sucks," you might say to yourself, "but at least I'm not stuck in a tornado." Tough nuts for these 'terns (click the video above), who are caught in a diabolical attempt at viral marketing: the more you tweet about The Weather Channel, the more violent winds will blow in their faces.
The sadistic ad campaign is simple: entice people to tweet about "Tornado Week" (The Weather Channel's take on shark week, only devoted to wind patterns that kill people), with each tweet powering up fans pointed at two hapless interns. Right now it's blowing at 75 mph. The interns are trying desperately to draw notes on pieces of paper whipping in their faces. What do they say? The wind is blowing so hard that it's difficult to tell. Perhaps some sort of SOS letter, or a rough draft of a cover letter to secure a better internship next year.
Twitter's communication team is all-in, though, encouraging us to join in:
Kind of AMAZING. Tweet with #TornadoWeek to turn up the fans on @weatherchannel interns. Watch them work here weather.com/tv/tvshows/tor…
— Carolyn Penner (@cpen) April 29, 2013
If these two brave brands are able to hit "1,000,000 mentions," TWC "will turn up the wind for a full blown EF-5 tornado inside the Weather Channel offices!" Those are wind speeds high enough to level an entire town, so best of luck to these two kids. [The Weather Channel]