20th Century Fox Gives Real Apology for a Fake News Campaign

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/business/20th-century-fox-fake-news-ad-campaign.html

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Since the term fake news entered the national lexicon, the advertising world has grappled with its role in inadvertently fueling the spread online of made-up stories about controversial topics.

Then came 20th Century Fox’s latest movie promotion tactic, for which it created fake news sites with plausible names like The Houston Leader and The Salt Lake City Guardian and populated them with partisan headlines involving Lady Gaga, President Trump, vaccinations and mental health.

Many of the articles on the sites, which were apparently produced in collaboration with a fake news creator the company declined to identify, were shared by people on Facebook who apparently did not know they were part of a stunt meant to publicize the film “A Cure for Wellness.”

Marketers have long been known to twist the truth to serve their interests, but many in the industry thought 20th Century Fox and Regency Enterprises, a producer of the film, had crossed a line. The film studio apologized for the strategy on Thursday.

“Fake news is not a cute or silly subject,” said Susan Credle, global chief creative officer of the ad agency FCB. “When you start to tear down media and question what’s real and what’s not real, our democracy is threatened.”

“I think this is a hot enough subject that most marketers would understand that taking advantage of a vulnerable public is dangerous,” she added.

When the strategy first became public this week in a report by Buzzfeed, Regency explained its use of fake news sites by saying the movie is “about a ‘fake’ cure that makes people sicker.”

On Thursday, however, 20th Century Fox said, “the digital campaign was inappropriate on every level, especially given the trust we work to build every day with our consumers.”

“In raising awareness for our films, we do our best to push the boundaries of traditional marketing in order to creatively express our message to consumers,” Dan Berger, a spokesman for the 20th Century Fox movie studio, said in an email to The New York Times. “In this case, we got it wrong.”

He added, “We have reviewed our internal approval process and made appropriate changes to ensure that every part of a campaign is elevated to and vetted by management in order to avoid this type of mistake in the future.”

The web addresses for the fake news sites, which previously displayed ads for the movie and cited its plot in articles, now redirect people to the film’s website.

“It’s a very kind of perverse use of a genre that is really counterproductive,” said Richard Edelman, chief executive of the public relations company Edelman. “I don’t think fake news is funny in the least. If people want to have stunts, fine, but one of the great dangers it seems to me at the moment is people can’t differentiate between that which is real and that which is a fake story.”

As of Thursday, it was still possible to copy and paste links to the fake news articles created for the campaign into the search bar on Facebook and to find evidence of people publicly posting them as if they were true. The made-up headlines and publication titles still appear like any other news story in the feed. Others were reposted on partisan websites like Red State Watcher.

One woman shared a fake article from the imaginary Houston Leader on Feb. 8, which alleged that President Trump had signed an executive order banning children from vaccines for 90 days. “At least an acknowledgment that vaccines cause harm,” the user wrote. “The only safe vaccine is the one not taken.”

Another article from the site, headlined “LEAKED: Lady Gaga Halftime Performance to Feature Muslim Tribute,” appeared to be the campaign’s most viral, with more than 65,000 shares. One user posted it on Feb. 5, the day of the Super Bowl, saying, “Clearly the N.F.L. has lost complete touch with its true fan base.”

Facebook, which has taken steps to fight fake news on the site, said in a statement, “To prevent gaming the system, we do not comment on the specifics of each individual piece of content that was or was not classified as a news hoaxes and why.” The company added that such efforts would rely on its community and third-party organizations.

The articles were puzzling as a marketing tool, containing promotional hashtags like #cureforwellness or #takethecure and plot references, but adding substantial portions of verified information so as to look like real news. The same tactic was commonly used by the authors of fake political news that drew scrutiny in the lead-up to the presidential election, as was the publication naming strategy; one famously debunked source on Facebook last year was called The Denver Guardian.

An archived version of the vaccination article shows that it included real tweets posted by Mr. Trump in the past drawing a link between vaccines and autism. (The link is not supported by scientific evidence.)

While the Lady Gaga article attributed its false information to “an unnamed source, in no way affiliated with the singer” — a clear red flag — it also contained real comments the singer made before the performance.

It is not new for hoaxes to be used as marketing gimmicks, particularly in the age of social media. In 2011, a marketing company made a viral video in which a man appeared to use a small device connected to his iPhone to hack into the jumbo screens in Times Square — an entertaining but fake stunt that promoted the movie “Limitless.”

Andrew Essex, chief executive of Tribeca Enterprises and a former chief executive of the creative agency Droga5, likened the movie studio’s effort to Orson Welles’s radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds,” which was largely told through simulated news bulletins. He praised it as clever, saying it was “nice to see such inventiveness coming from Hollywood rather than Macedonia.”

“The best advertising has to rub up against something; they’re tapping into something happening in the culture right now,” he said. "There is no moral quandary here because they are not purporting to deceive people with actual news. Anyone with a pulse can see this is actual parody.”

Others in the marketing industry mainly viewed the strategy as ineffective, particularly with consumers who have been fatigued by partisan news.

“I’m sure people working on it were thinking, hey, we’ll be super relevant, ride this wave of fake news,” said Rob Schwartz, chief executive of TBWA\Chiat\Day New York. “There’s so much drama out of this administration, and between the manufacturing of fake news and the alternative news, I’m tired of it.”

Despite the stunt, “A Cure for Wellness,” which cost roughly $40 million to make, is expected to fall flat at the box office, with projected weekend ticket sales of less than $8 million.