Media Hoaxes

In a climate of mega-branding, syndicated media and a digitally interconnected world, how exactly does one go about getting a moment in the spotlight? Well, it would seem more and more often you get a few talented individuals together and manufacture a clever hoax. Media technology is easy to access and use as well as fairly inexpensive.

One recent and amazingly clever grab for attention was the Serpica Naro hoax in Italy. An activist group known as Chainworkers (www.chainworkers.org) seeking to spread the word about the struggle of low-end fashion industry workers created a fake fashion icon. Through the use of web sites (www.serpicanaro.com), street protests and the lust of mainstream media for fresh controversy they got the attention of the fashion world for long enough to state their case and make a very public point.

After the Serpica Naro media hoax in Italy at the end of this year’s fashion week it seemed natural to do an article about this type of thing. The changing nature of this brave new world is such that it is far easier to get broad attention from an ever widening demographic. When we look at numbers of tech savvy people in various age groups we see the younger sectors being far more connected. This is oddly not a phenomenon that enough marketers seem to be dealing with as a progressive trend. In other words not enough weight is being given to the fact that a non-tech savvy older generation is a rapidly disappearing demographic that won’t be coming back. The further along the path to tech enablement the world ventures the more people will become aware of what the world is doing. The rules of the game have changed.

The Serpica Naro incident is far from unique. Fashion designer Julian Roberts (www.julianand.com) was briefly famous for some very interesting stunts with his brand Nothing Nothing. He is noted for doing things like sending invites to fashion events without putting an address on them as to where the event is supposed to happen and publicizing a show that ended up being a pile of folded clothes left in the middle of a bridge. Yet another infamous stunt was the VW Polo commercial hoax. In this “hoax” a suicide bomber blows himself up in VW Polo that contains the blast. “Small but tough.”

Here is where the line blurs a bit. Note the word, “hoax” is in quotes. Lee and Dan of LAD (www.leeanddan.com) put the VW advert together and they have been rather tight lipped about where they got the money to film the spoof. It rocketed them to at least momentary international fame and gave VW some much-needed buzz. VW threatened to sue and made a big fuss about the ad. It was a very successful viral that reportedly “escaped” onto the web. Ultimately Lee and Dan apologizing solved the outrage that Volkswagen supposedly had over the incident. I managed to find a link for those who didn’t get to see it. No telling how long it will remain active. http://www.boreme.com/bm/JAN05/a/vw-suicide-bomber/jump_fr.htm

What I am attempting to illustrate is the growing difficulty to tell who is really behind the scenes. Did the boys from LAD really just decide to spend an estimated £40,000 British Pounds on a short for their show reel? Interestingly enough it has been reported that Lee and Dan are now working for Ogilvy & Mather, the company responsible for ads that raised a similar stir involving the Ford Sportka and a cat. http://www.loper.org/~george/trends/2004/Apr/967.html

Even now fans of Fiona Apple await the release of her latest album “Extraordinary Machine”. Sony supposedly shelved the album after Fiona finished it in 2003. It lacked a marketable single. Yet there are websites like www.fionaapple.org and www.freefiona.com and it isn’t particularly hard to find mp3’s on the web for illegal download. Not to mention that at least one source claims that these download sites have all been allowed to run for around three months before they have received a cease and desist order. There have also been reports of Seattle’s END 107.7 playing tracks from the album and not getting a stop order at all. Fiona supposedly isn’t really saying much one way or the other. So is Sony pulling a hoax or is the fan base crying out for their pop-goddess to be free? Is Sony’s Andrew Lack far more hip than we have given him credit for? He may well be but I suppose that kind of gets right to the point of how things are getting increasingly hard to sort out.

There have been countless media hoaxes and PR stunts in recent years from both ends of the spectrum that have masqueraded as something other than what they really are. While stunts in general are at least as old as PT Barnum, the increasing ease and speed at which they can be pulled off is something that is surely changing the landscape of human interaction. There is a lot of talk about how people are so very media savvy these days, especially “the youth” but what can’t be ignored is the fact that the merry tricksters seeking our attention are our friends, colleagues, neighbors, etc. I’ll suggest they know how to talk to “us” and get our attention. As the old guard leaders of big business retire or wake up to a new paradigm ( http://www.psfk.com/2005/04/murdoch_finally.html ) we will likely see more plausibly deniable pretenders.

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about how this media transition will end up. There are certainly a million and one aspects of what is happening and where it will lead. What I will say is that as big media learns how to act, or at least look, like small media and clever people everywhere find ways to do the opposite; we are in for a show. The main question, as I see it, is the same as it ever was, “Who can you trust?”

During the writing of this article NPR broadcast an interesting piece related to many of the questions raised by this article and a number of recent PSFK posts. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4583366