Yes, We Received a Nerf Gun via FedEx and Here’s Why

By Kiran Aditham 

This week, some interesting swag landed on our desk, namely the Nerf “N-Strike” (what, no Crotch Bat?) that you see above. While we initially thought Christmas came early, the note attached filled us in that it’s all part of promoting a little “tweet to shoot” experiment from Neiman Labs, the in-house R&D team at Philly-based agency Neiman.

While we’ve seen shoot-from-my-computer efforts before, and on a much more epic scale (remember Deutsch LA’s Twisted Metal promotion from earlier this year?), Neiman Labs at least rekindles our nostalgia by letting users play the classic game Duck Hunt just by tweeting. Between now and 5pm EST today and tomorrow, those who feel like kicking it old-school can use the hashtag #TweettoShoot and fire off a Twitter-powered Nerf gun that Neiman Labs set up in its office. Let the  R&D team break down the process of its experiment: “We rigged the gun to a 12-volt power supply and an Arduino Uno micro-controller. We combed the Twitter API for mentions of a specific hashtag. We rebuilt the classic Duck Hunt interface. We took over a room and streamed it live.” The stream itself is a little lagged and the gun we were sent actually has nothing to do with the effort, but we appreciate the gift and the chance once again to see that annoying dog. Check out a teaser video for the Neiman Labs project below.

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