Real vs. Fake Ads

It’s getting harder and harder to tell what’s real and what’s fake anymore in terms of new media advertising. There seems to be almost a free-for-all in terms of web videos.

A viral video that’s been making the rounds supposedly shows survelliance camera footage of an office worker freaking out. It turns out that it was actually created by Timur Bekmambetov, the director behind the upcoming movie Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie. Apparently it was a viral stunt about breaking out of your workaday drudgery, as the geeky main character does in Wanted.

Even more surprisingly, a fake tv commercial for JC Penney recently won a bronze at the Cannes Lions International advertising awards show. JC Penney has publically reprimanded its agency – Saatchi & Saatchi – for entering the spot in the awards, saying it was never intended to be seen by anyone. The spot is clever, but seems to promote teens having sex.

With all this crazy marketing going on, it makes you wonder whether or not this was really planned or not.

Applebees UGC

I know that everyone’s trying user generated content (UGC) nowadays, but the latest attempt by Applebees left me shaking my head.  How many times do you find yourself at Applebees and someone decides to bust out their video camera?  It’s not something that probably happens often enough that it deserves this campaign.  Perhaps Applebees is hoping people will now bring their video cameras with them and will videotape, but this has the potential of easily backfiring… all it takes is one person to videotape what the food looks like when it arrives and compares it to the great looking picture in the menu.  Based on their recent commercials, it looks like Applebees is planning to use the videos submitted to change up the first few seconds of their new commercials.  It’ll be interesting to see how many videos actually get submitted.  I guess you never know… there are plenty of aspiring actors and videographers out there.