Hunter College student Heidi Cee had a big problem: She lost her expensive Coach handbag, a precious gift from a guy named Adam. Heidi blogged about her situation and posted lost and found ads all over campus, offering a $500 reward. When somebody turned in the bag Heidi discovered to her horror that it wasn’t real; it was a counterfeit.
But Heidi Cee isn’t real either.
She was created for a class at Hunter College sponsored by the International Anticounterfeiting Coalition (IACC). The IACC paid Hunter College for the chance to design the course and lead students through the process of creating a fake student and her fake blog and MySpace page.
IACC calls it guerrilla marketing, but others might call it a lack of transparency. The IACC did come clean eventually, via a post on the blog entitled “Here’s the catch – I am totally not real!” In a world increasingly cynical about PR, this is a questionable message to send to students of public relations and marketing.
Ethical issues aside, this is a stunningly bad campaign for the IACC. Not only have they managed to offend most of the Hunter College student body with a deceptive campaign, they’ve also managed to take irony to a whole new level. Did the IACC realize how ironic it was for an organization campaigning against fake products to create a fake person in order to write a fake blog about fictional events?
The students may not have learned ethical and transparent public relations practices in this class, but they certainly took a class in irony.