The Alabama city is asking its citizens to push giant buttons, built to look like Amazon's Dash gizmos, that send Tweets bearing pro-Birmingham factoids.
In the competition for the wackiest gimmicks that cities are deploying to get the attention of Amazon in its search for a second headquarters, Birmingham, Ala., is turning to a bit of engineering. And Twitter.
The city’s boosters on Friday installed two giant buttons built to resemble Amazon Dash units, the company’s one-click ordering gizmos. But instead of placing an order for Doritos or dish detergent, Birmingham’s devices fire off one of 600 different prepared tweets bearing a bit of propaganda for Alabama’s largest city.
From flattering newspaper travel guides:
To puzzlingly obvious statements:
There’s also trivia (Michael Jordan’s ill-fated foray into baseball included a stint playing for the Birmingham Barons) and pitches about the city’s quality of life.
Birmingham’s “BringAtoB” campaign had previously set up giant boxes built to resemble Amazon packages around town. Its dash buttons live near a central department store and on the campus of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
The city, likely a long shot with a population of 212,000, is among the smaller bidders  for Amazon’s HQ2, though its metropolitan area of slightly more than 1 million meets the threshold Amazon laid out in its request for proposals.