The Hummingbird

You got to love the Internet! And here is yet another reason why: there is this show called My Own Worst Enemy in which for some reason Christian Slater plays a main lead. The story line is crazy to say the list as the show is all about a secret operative that has a “switch” implanted in his brain that lets him go back and forth from licensed to kill splinter cell agent to a normal (unsuspecting) family man. Show starts when something goes bad with the switch. Pretty crazy, right? Right.

But now the fun part: in the third episode writers put in the scenario a little buzz starter. Main character apparently had sex with his wife and did the hummingbird position.

At that moment everyone wonders “what is the hummingbird”? And this is precisely what the writers were counting on. Why? Well, what do you do to learn about the hummingbird? You google it. And when people google the specific phrases you can see that in google trends. Good stuff.

What it turns out is that the writers did this just for that reason - to see if “the hummingbird” will show up in google trends. A pretty smart way to check the ratings and how many people watch the show. What was the outcome? If you check trends for “the hummingbird” you’ll see a spike on the day the episode aired.  See for yourself below:

I don’t know if the spike is as big as the execs wanted it to be but definitely My Own Worst Enemy caused a stir with the hummingbird.  I really liked the concept of doing simple and cheap “buzz checking” and this show did it with great ingenuity.