Advertising Hoaxes

Life With Skippy — From the Hoax Forum: Ever heard of Life With Skippy? It was an American television show that aired briefly in 1969 that featured "the misadventures of two small-town boys, the trouble-making Skippy and his sidekick Gummy." Unfortunately it got cancelled after only six episodes. Still don't remember it? Well, if you look around the internet you can find a surprising number of references to this hard-to-remember show. It's mentioned on message boards, there's a Yahoo Group devoted to its young star (who was later found dead in a brothel), there's a Life With Skippy website, and a website maintained by the actor Adam Felber who played Gummy. Plus, you can buy the hat worn by Skippy on eBay. Well, if you still can't remember the show the reason is that it never existed. It's the creation of a New York-based production company, Metropolis Entertainment, who are trying to promote a new sitcom they've developed called Life After Skippy, which is about the career of a down-on-his-luck former child actor (who once supposedly worked on Life With Skippy). Quite an elaborate guerrilla marketing campaign they've put together for this. You can view clips from the real show, Life After Skippy, on their site. Some of them are pretty funny.

Manchurian Global — At first glance, Manchurian Global looks like any other faceless corporation. Its website is full of corporate jargon about mission statements, international client bases, and holistic visions. But, of course, Manchurian Global isn't a real corporation. Its site is part of the advertising campaign for The Manchurian Candidate, which opens today. The illusion of reality that the site maintains is actually quite convincing. They've really made it look like a real company. Only until you dig far into the site do you arrive at suspicious stuff, such as a video showing one of their scientists, Dr. Atticus Noyle, talking about how they can control people's personalities at a genetic level. Paramount has been running an ad on my site for The Manchurian Candidate for the past two weeks, which I thought was pretty cool since I've always liked the original 1962 version of the movie starring Frank Sinatra. I'm hoping the new version can live up to the original.

BlondeStar — A lot of people have the OnStar system in their car that lets them connect to an operator to get 24-hour roadside assistance. BlondeStar is the same thing, just designed specifically for blondes. More of a blonde joke (or spoof advertisement) than a hoax, but amusing anyway, unless you're incredibly offended by blonde jokes. (links to an mp3 file... click the download button)

Swedish Anti-Smoking Campaign — The Swedish anti-smoking activist group A Non Smoking Generation has plastered posters all over Stockholm that make claims such as 'smoking stunts penis growth,' 'cigarette filters are filled with mouse excrement,' and 'second-hand smoke kills birds.' The problem is that none of these claims are acually true. But the group figures that the outrageousness of the claims might entice a few people to visit their website to learn the real facts. This once again demonstrates one of the central principles upon which the advertising industry was founded: if you can't get their attention by telling the truth, then get it by telling a lie.

Blairwitching and the Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan — Five years ago the Blair Witch Project became a multi-million dollar box-office sensation thanks to a clever marketing scheme that pretended the Blair Witch was real (and offered a spooky companion website filled with pseudo historical background about her). Ever since then movie marketers have latched onto the concept of promoting movies via hoaxes. So much so, that I think we should just begin referring to the practice of promoting movies by hoaxing the public as 'Blairwitching'. For instance, a sample sentence using this term might be: Failing to think of any original way to promote their movie, the marketing team simply decided to Blairwitch it.

The latest movie to be Blairwitched is the Sci-Fi Channel's documentary about filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan (The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan) that aired last night. The Sci-Fi Channel's marketing team promoted the movie by promising that it was going to reveal a secret buried in Shyamalan's past, a secret that had driven him towards his obsession with the supernatural. Supposedly Shyamalan didn't want this secret exposed, which caused him to stop cooperating with the documentary team. This conflict between Shyamalan and his biographers managed to garner a fair bit of press. But then yesterday, when the documentary aired, the Sci-Fi Channel admitted that they simply invented Shymalan's buried secret as well as Shyamalan's disagreement with them (the big secret was supposed to be that he once witnessed a drowning).

I like the line in this article about the hoax campaign where NBC executives (NBC owns the Sci-Fi Channel) apologize, saying that "We would never intend to offend the public or the press and value our relationship with both." Yeah, right. Meanwhile, they're happy to accept all the publicity that the hoax generated (including having people like me write about it on their weblogs). And oh yeah, the hoax itself and the documentary were ultimately all big advertisements for Shyamalan's upcoming movie The Village, which actually looks kind of cool. (Thanks to Terry in the hoax forum for giving a heads up about this)

Who is Mr. Six? — This question comes from the hoax forum, where it's sparked quite a debate: what's the deal with that guy in the Six Flags ads? You know the one. The 'old dude' who looks like he's about 90-years-old but dances around maniacally like a 19-year-old. Is he really an old man? Or is he a young professional dancer dressed up as an old man? If you're not familiar with 'Mr. Six', then you can check out the commercials starring him at Six Flags' website. Apparently Six Flags is being swamped by requests to reveal the true identity of Mr. Six, but so far they're staying mum, evidently hoping to milk the interest in him for all it's worth. So here's a poll so that the public can vote on who they think Mr. Six really is:

The Joice Heth/Stepford Wives Connection — A trailer for Paramount's new movie The Stepford Wives (which is about housewives being transformed into mindless, but beautiful robots) contains some controversial scenes. One shot shows an image of a sexy-looking Condoleeza Rice naked from the waist up (arms covering her chest), and another scene shows Hillary Clinton morphing into a buxom homemaker bearing a tray of cookies. But if you blink you'd miss these scenes because they literally flash across the screen in less than a second. As a result, most people never noticed them when the trailer aired on tv last week. But Rebecca Reynolds, a 'sharp-eyed' resident of Kansas City, Missouri noticed them, and she immediately called up her local tv station to complain about what she felt were the shocking and offensive images. The station aired a story about Rebecca's discovery, and soon word of the trailer's hidden content had spread all across the country.

Media coverage of this story has focused on the scenes from the trailer, but what makes me suspicious is the role played by the outraged midwesterner, Rebecca Reynolds. It seems awfully convenient that she happened to notice what was in the trailer and felt compelled to contact the media about it, thereby generating great free publicity for Paramount. Could she actually be in cahoots with Paramount? After all, Paramount knew exactly what was in the trailer, but they needed someone to complain in order to create a story the media would cover.

I can't prove anything, but I am suspicious since this is one of the oldest publicity tricks in the book: the pseudo-controversy generated by phony complaints made to the media. P.T. Barnum used this strategy again and again throughout his career. For instance, at the beginning of his career he was exhibiting Joice Heth, an elderly black woman who, so he claimed, was 161-years-old (she was probably in her 80s). When public interest in her began to taper off, Barnum wrote an anonymous letter to a local paper alleging that Joice Heth was a fake. But he complained that not only was Heth not as old as advertised, but that she was also not even human, being a "curiously constructed automaton, made up of whalebone, India-rubber, and numberless springs." This letter, and the controversy it created, helped revive public interest in Joice Heth and thereby substantially fattened Barnum's wallet.


Barnum's Joice-Heth publicity stunt occurred about 170 years ago, but it's odd how parallel it is to Paramount's Stepford-Wives stunt, since they both involve the suggestion of women really being robots in disguise. Weird. But probably a coincidence.

Walk and Talk Hoax Caller — Nokia offers a product they call the 'Walk and Talk Hoax Caller.' Their ad copy describes it as a hands-free voice changer for your mobile phone. "Prank call Anonymous Calls Winding up your mates and enemies. The fun really begins when you plug in the Hoax Caller and switch the unit on." Yeah, buy this product and you too can be just like the creepy-looking loser in their ad making obscene phone calls to young teenage girls. I wonder what marketing genius picked out this sinister scenario to sell the product? (via Red Ferret Journal)

Society for the Protection of Plants — The Society for the Protection of Plants wants you to know that cutting or injuring plants in any way is Murder. So stop mowing the lawn or walking across the grass, for crying out loud. This anti-vegetarianism ad was created by Max over at Maxigumee Land. And yes, of course, it's a spoof. He has a full gallery of these anti-vegetarianism ads. (via Adrants)

Ass-vertising — First there was head-vertising. Now there's ass-vertising, which appears to be just as real as headvertising was (which means that, as odd as it seems, it actually is real). The concept behind assvertising is pretty simple. Slap an ad on an attractive woman's ass. I guess men are looking there anyway, so some advertiser (Night Agency, to be specific) had the brilliant idea to put the ads where the eyes are focused. Even though assvertising is real, tADoos (which are corporate-sponsored tattoos) remain a hoax. (via Adrants)

Hunting for Bambi Officially a Hoax — It's official. Michael Burdick, the guy behind that whole 'Hunting for Bambi' thing that turned into a media circus about a year ago (you remember, the Las Vegas company that claimed to be hosting paintball games in which you could hunt naked women), has finally admitted that the whole thing was a hoax. Not that anyone was in much doubt of that. As part of a plea bargain deal "Burdick acknowledged that claiming the paintball hunts were real was part of an advertising strategy for the videos and apologized for 'any embarrassment to the city of Las Vegas caused by such false or misleading promotional activity.'" I'm sure we'll all be able to sleep easier now that this has finally been laid to rest.

Afterlife Publicity — As Gawker reports, a great 'take-this-job-and-shove-it' email has been making the rounds recently. It's penned by Bob Rubenstein, a publicist for a record label, who lost his job soon after the lead singer of the band he was supposed to promote, Pre)Thing, died of a heart attack. Bob, embittered for being fired, dishes some dirt on the company he was canned from, revealing how they brought in a psychic to talk with the departed spirit of the singer to see if he'd be willing to do any interviews with music journalists, via the psychic, from beyond the grave. But it turns out there's more to this story than Gawker realized. Rolling Stone reveals that the Bob Rubenstein email is actually a hoax created as an ingenious viral marketing campaign in order to get the word out about Pre)Thing, since their lead singer really did die recently and therefore really can't do publicity. (via BoingBoing)

Katz, Cohen & Phelps — Are you a woman who needs a really good divorce lawyer? Then check out the law firm of Katz, Cohen & Phelps where their motto is "Is he cheating? Let's nail him." Actually, that's not really a law firm. It's just another fake website used to promote an upcoming movie, in this case The Laws of Attraction starring Julianne Moore and Pierce Brosnan. In this case, it's a really half-hearted attempt at a fake website. I mean, that's obviously Julianne Moore posing on the website, and they stuck a movie rating on at the bottom of it. Still, it continues the trend of using fake websites to promote movies.

Petition to Stop the Godsend Institute — I talked about the Godsend Institute (the website of a cloning lab that's really a promo for an upcoming movie of the same name) a few days ago. I said that I really didn't think the site was that convincing. But maybe others have been fooled by it because someone started an online petition to ban the Godsend Institute. Of course, I'm not above suspecting that the petition was started by the movie studio itself as a way to generate faux controversy. This was a favorite ploy of P.T. Barnum. Back in 1835 he was exhibiting Joice Heth, an elderly black woman whom he claimed was the 161-year-old former nurse of George Washington. When attendance at the exhibit began to decrease, he sent an anonymous letter to a local paper angrily declaring that Heth was a fake, a "curiously constructed automaton, made up of whalebone, India-rubber, and numberless springs." Sure enough, attendance immediately picked up again as visitors returned to see if Heth really was an old woman or a mechanical automaton.

Godsend Institute, and other movie sites — A few people have written to me about the Godsend Institute, which is supposedly a Massachusetts fertility clinic that offers human cloning as an option for its patients. Its website is quite slick and well produced, but the Godsend Institute is, of course, not real. The site is part of the advertising campaign for the upcoming movie Godsend starring Robert De Niro. Wired published an article about this yesterday. Ever since the Blair Witch Project succeeded in creating such a buzz five years ago with its companion website, movie studios have sought to repeat this trick by creating sites that try to convince websurfers that their fictional characters or companies are real. The site for the upcoming I, Robot, starring Will Smith, is a recent example. As is Lacuna, Inc., which is a fictitious company featured in The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I would say the strategy is wearing a bit thin now because a) the sites usually aren't that believable (for instance, you can kind of recognize Robert De Niro on the Godsend Institute site, which blows the whole cover), and b) they're not that interesting even if you do believe they're real. They give surfers little to do or explore. The Blair Witch site worked not only because it suggested the witch was real, but also because it gave people lots of interesting background material on her to browse through. One recent studio-created site that did understand this was Kingdom Hospital (from the ABC miniseries). It didn't simply try to convince you that Kingdom Hospital was real. Creepy things also started to happen as you navigated around the site, which made it fun to explore.

Bimpco — Bimpco offers a variety of ingenious products that will help you to keep your cellphone bills under control. The site is really a front for Cricket Wireless, but it's amusing.

The Mini Cooper Autonomous Robot — Colin Mayhew, an engineer at a British division of BMW, decided to convert a mini cooper r50 into an autonomous biped robot. The results are quite impressive. In particular, check out this video. The no-frills design of the page makes it seem quite believable. But sleuths on Slashdot have determined that it's a hoax. The url is registered to an ad agency working for BMW. (via Things Magazine)

Dragon Hoax Was a Hoax — Back in January I posted an entry about what I called the Almost Great Dragon Hoax. It described a tiny dragon that had been found in a jar of formaldehyde in a garage in Oxfordshire. Supposedly the dragon had been created in the nineteenth century by German scientists trying to hoax their British counterparts, but the joke had been spotted by the British and placed in the trash... only to be recovered from there and end up years later in the Oxfordshire garage. Now it turns out that the dragon is actually of a much more modern origin. BBC News is reporting that author Allistair Mitchell created the story about the dragon as a publicity stunt in order to convince a publisher to publish his book, Unearthly History. It worked, because he just signed a deal with Waterstone. The dragon itself was built by Crawley Creatures, professional model makers. (Thanks to everyone who sent me links about this story).

David Manning Update — In 2001 Sony Pictures got caught promoting its movies by using glowing quotations from a non-existent movie critic named David Manning to hype them. When the non-existence of Manning was pointed out, Sony pulled the ads, but to this day it has maintained its right to have printed the quotations, claiming they were protected as free speech. Yesterday Los Angeles Justice Reuben Ortega disallowed that defense. His remarks were notable: [if the case against Sony succeeds] "no longer will people be seen lurching like mindless zombies toward the movie theatre, compelled by a puff piece. What a noble and overwhelming undertaking."

I Can Still Tell Your Wife, Bill — The advertising agency Yarnbird is trying to make a name for itself as a creator of viral content. It invents odd sites that appear to be the creations of weird, eccentric people. The hope is that the popularity of the sites will provide publicity for Yarnbird. One of its previous sites, that I've linked to before, was My Son Peter. Another site that people have been linking to recently is I can still tell your wife, Bill. It appears to be created by a woman who's mad at Bill, a married guy she had an affair with. But like I said, it's really created by Yarnbird. I guess their strategy works because people like me link to them.