CNN
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John Oliver is remodeling from a comic right into a marketing campaign supervisor for one of many greatest elections of the 12 months: New Zealand’s Bird of the Century ballot.
On his present “Last Week Tonight” on Monday, he backed the pūteketeke hen as New Zealand’s Bird of the Century, a contest organized by the conservation group Forest & Bird.
Oliver listed “fun facts” explaining why the “weird puking birds with colorful mullets” had been his choose for the extremely coveted avian title.
They carry their infants on their backs, he stated, each mother and father incubate the eggs and have a tendency to the chicks and eat feathers by the a whole lot to guard their abdomen earlier than throwing up a ball of feathers and fish bones.
“Even its name is fun to say – pūteketeke – it feels like your tongue is tap dancing,” he added.
“And you want elegance, I’ll give you elegance, they have a mating dance where they both grab a clump of wet grass and chest bump each other, before standing around unsure of what to do next.”
To unfold the message, Oliver and his present revealed billboards staged all over the world.
An advert put in on a New Zealand bus cease described the pūteketeke because the “Lord of the Wings,” whereas an animated video of the hen performed above one of many busiest crossings in Tokyo.
In Europe, a billboard on the Champs-Élysées in Paris depicted the hen sitting at a desk of French cheese and sporting a beret, whereas a van drove round London with an image of the hen on a throne saying, “Help us crown a real king.”
In Brazil, a aircraft trailing a banner flew over Ipanema Beach.
The present even put up a billboard in Manetowoc, Wisconsin “because not everyone lives in big cities.”
There are fewer than 1,000 pūteketekes, also called the Australasian crested grebe, left in New Zealand, because the inhabitants recovers from a low of about 200 birds within the Nineteen Eighties.
Initially launched to lift consciousness of New Zealand’s endangered, endemic birds, the competition is normally an annual two-week occasion and has turn into a nationwide establishment. But it has not been with out controversy.
A bat, fairly than a hen, gained the competitors in 2021, whereas mass voter fraud threatened to delegitimize the competitors the 12 months earlier than.
This 12 months, Oliver’s marketing campaign has already had a large impression, with greater than 10,000 votes forged in a single day, organizers said on social media.
“This is what democracy is all about – America interfering in foreign elections,” Oliver quipped.
But supporters for different birds in rivalry are hitting again.
“No, we’re not salty about US heavyweight @Last Week Tonight lurching into the campaign,” the Tawaki piki toka, or rockhopper penguin, marketing campaign stated on X, previously Twitter, alongside a satirical poster. “We’re salty (and full of krill) because we’re seabirds!”
But in Oliver’s eyes, there may be “no bird on earth more deserving of bird of the century than this one right here,” he stated in entrance of a large pūteketeke puppet on the stage of his present.
