We organized a buzz stunt (event) for Pivovar Ostravar in support of the pub launch of the semi-dark football lager beerOstravar Bazal. We hung up nearly 3,000 packages overnight in 12 locations around Ostrava. Each contained a red whistle branded with the Bazal logo, and a card with a short text and a list of all Ostravian establishments that will be serving this bubbly delight. Through short comments over the course of the event itself, we’ll try to give you the visual of what it looks like when you try to “flood” parts of Ostrava with whistles. You can see more photos and a video on our Facebook page.

27. March 27, 2009, the City of Ostrava

2:47 a.m.
My cell phone alarm is going off for the fourth time…this time I get up. The hour that I normally got to sleep is the one that starts my day. The weather’s a big question mark, so I throw my scarf and gloves in my bag and head out. On the stairs I meet my cameraman Max, who just got in from Slovakia. He says he caught a good nap in the afternoon, so he has been up since 2:00 a.m. and is already a bit bored. My legs are still asleep and I’m a bit jealous of him. Our photographer joins us in front of the hotel and we await the rest of the team.

3:02 a.m.
We’re still waiting for people. Some goofed up our meeting point and are waiting in a completely different part of Ostrava, while the others forgot it was up to them to get here. With nothing left to do, we wait.

3:15 a.m.
We’re finally all together. We’ve given everyone jackets sporting the Our Football Beer project label, and we fill up backpacks with the whistles. We divide up localities and agree on how to share the cameraman and photographer. Their first location is Jan Hus Park, right nearby the hotel.

3:28 a.m.
We start by tying the packages with whistles to the park bench. There’s an easy way to pull the string out of the package one after another and then hang the whistles, making the work go much faster. But I don’t discover this method for another two hours. I pull apart the rubber band holding all the packages together. The first thing I see when thinking about where to hang these things are the trees. My partner Ondra meanwhile is “bombarding” all the benches and light poles. The photographer and cameraman are jumping in between us, mainly to provide the photographer with illumination.

3:46 a.m.
By the time I’ve covered another tree with whistles, the wind picks up and the branches with the packages become loud. Those little hidden balls in the whistles are kicking up nicely in the wind; the waving packages thus form an entertaining sound effect. No packages are falling, which I feel good about. The weather situation is worse; it looks like rain. Just great.

4:00 a.m.
It hasn’t rained yet, and we gradually move from Jan Hus Park out to the surroundings. We hang the packages on the adjacent bus stop. Ondra starts hanging the whistles on the railing, and we apply this method until the last whistle has been hung. When we finish, both sides of the streets fill with the sound of whistles blown naturally by the wind.

4:27 a.m.
An older man comes up to me and asks me what’s going on. I explain it to him and he ends up leaving with four packages – for his work buddies.

4:40 a.m.
As I’m digging through my bundle of whistles, the municipal police pull up to us. Two officers ask the same question, but with markedly less enthusiasm than the man had. To calm them down, I offer them the opportunity to take down the info from my ID, and they each got one whistle. They leave satisfied, and that’s the last I see of them. We’re running out of whistles, so we await fresh supplies.

5:10 a.m.
We slowly stop “bombing” each railing along the street by Jan Hus Park and moved on to the front of Hotel Imperial. We call to the other teams to see how they’re managing, and they tell us that some of the hanging packages are already disappearing. We hear the Baník anthem resounding from afar and we’re curious to find out how many “socially tired” fans are around us in the wee hours.

5:15 a.m.
A bit away from us comes a pair of guys decked out in full Baník garb. In the park, we again adorn the trees with the little packages – lamp posts and railings too. We’re out of whistles, and the other teams must be running out too. We slowly return to the spot where we started.

5:45 a.m.
Almost all the whistles have disappeared from the benches and from the railings around the park. They're still hanging on the trees. Walking around the park, we arrive at the bus stop – several of the whistles are already taken, the nearby tree is bare, and the packages that we hung right on the bus timetables of individual busses are gone too. The railing across the street is still rather full. The quickly disappearing whistles however spurn us on to retrace our “hanging” paths to see what the story is elsewhere.

6:05 a.m.
I plan to return to Jan Hus Park and photograph the last whistles, but as we go past the railing I can see that all the other packages are gone. As I walk through the park, the trees are bare, and one little package with one little whistle is hanging from one lamp post. On a bench a bit farther along, an empty package is waving in the breeze. Nearby is an information panel with a map of Ostrava, so I’m looking at how far I am from the places where the other teams have hung whistles. The closest by is Masaryk square…

6:25 a.m.
I crisscross the square and I don’t see anything. I ran into two posters calling for the tapping of the first keg with the Bazal football lager, but I don’t see the packages anywhere. I ask a lady walking by to be sure that I’m in the right place, and she merely confirms my sense of direction. I call the cameraman and photographer to find out where they are and if they were able to capture on film any of the people taking the packages. They assured me that they had a few good shots. The whistles unfortunately began disappearing faster than we were all expecting.

8:30 - 11:00 a.m.
When we check the places that we hung whistles, we find that everything has “turned to white”, and we only found one solitary package left hanging at the Svinov train station. The police didn’t even call us. We personally bring special packages into the offices of selected regional media outlets for journalists, containing the Bazal whistle and a press release from Staropramen Breweries.