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# Human Shaped Planes Over New York... Marketing or Art?
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/human-shaped-planes-over-new-york/
- Published: 2012-02-08T14:08:11.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:48:58.000Z
- Description: Look, up in the sky! It's a bird. No, it's a plane. Wait, it's a, er, marketing campaign?
- Author: AX Mina
- Tags: Opinion, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:51 (2012, 2013, part 1)

![Visitors in DUMBO watch as RC planes shaped to look like people fly over the East River.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2012/02/flyingpeople.png)

Visitors in DUMBO watch as RC planes shaped to look like people fly over the East River.

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird. No, it’s a plane. Wait, it’s a, er, marketing campaign?

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2012/02/flying-people-liftoff-300.jpg "flying-people-liftoff-300")

Last, week, three people shot “human shaped RC planes” off Brooklyn Bridge Park, where they flew over the East River and past the Bridge and iconic Manhattan skyline. It was like a Superman movie come to life, as the silhouettes dashed around the sky.

This cool video has gone viral, with over seven million views so far. But when I clicked around to find the source, I was surprised to see it was a viral video campaign. This from [TechCrunch](http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/30/flying-people-spotted-over-new-york-city-film-at-nine/?asid=e8d51908&ref=hyperallergic.com):

> In a recent publicity venture for their new movie “[Chronicle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronicle%5F%28film%29?ref=hyperallergic.com),” 20th Century Fox enlisted the help of viral marketing agency Thinkmodo to design and execute a rather unique campaign element that surely caused several doubletakes over the New York City skyline.

The human-shaped airplanes are an interesting marriage of arts, technology and marketing. I’m not yet sure how I feel about the marketing side of it, but as a project in and of itself, it’s pretty cool.