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Fox Ads Not So "Devine"
Executives at a major Hollywood studio conspire to fool moviegoers into seeing their movie by concocting fake ads and fake critics so they can rake it in at the box office.
Sound like a real-life sequel? Well it is.
Following the false advertising fiascos that have engulfed Sony in controversy, rival studio Fox Searchlight Pictures has now acknowledged that, yes, it too turned out fake commercials.
Daily Variety reports the Fox marketing department planted one of its own as a faux fan in national TV spots for Waking Ned Devine. And while you might argue that every studio probably stocks the so-called "testimonial" ads with phony fans, the Fox Searchlight slight is particulary glaring since the studio got on its high horse and boasted about "truth" in advertising for print ads of its current release Sexy Beast. Those ads urged moviegoers to "read honest-to-God rave reviews at www.foxsearchlight.com."
In the Devine TV testimonial (which, per tradition, shows a montage of on-the-street interviews supposedly gauging the reaction of moviegoers as they exit the theater), studio employee/fake fan Caren Lipson stood by her "date" and hailed the comedy as "hysterical!"
At the time, Lipson was the executive assistant to Fox Searchlight's v.p. of creative advertising, Samantha Hart. Neither Hart, nor Lipson, who now works for Universal Pictures' theatrical marketing department, was available for comment.
As for Fox Searchlight, it places the blame on former employees.
"Waking Ned Devine was released under a completely different Searchlight regime, and the people responsible for its marketing are no longer here," reads a statement from Nancy Utley, president of marketing for Fox Searchlight.
"We are disheartened that deceptive advertising practices eroded the public trust to an all-time low, forcing us to use full, unedited reviews to showcase the critical acclaim of a film like Sexy Beast," she adds. (Nice job getting that plug in, Nance.)
One of those former marketeers was Valerie Van Galder, Searchlight's head of marketing during the Devine campaign. She tells Variety that she was mainly running publicity for the film and expected "the people who were making the spots to know the [Federal Trade Commission] guidelines."
Apparently, they didn't. FTC rules call for full disclosure in an advertisement whenever there's a conflict of interest between the one endorsing the product and the seller.
Such rules didn't seem to bother Sony, which has come under fire for making up a movie critic for poster blurbs and planting studio employees in testimonial ads. Sony has since suspended the people responsible for the ersatz Ebert and put a moratorium on testimonial ads.
Meanwhile, the controversy is spreading through Hollywood faster than bad buzz. Three other studios that initially derided the Sony scam have publicly admitted using paid actors in testimonials to hype their own movies, according to the Washington Post. Universal did so for U-571 TV spots, as did Artisan for Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 and 20th Century Fox for Anna and the King.
Makes you wonder when the studios are going to come up with fake people to buy the tickets.
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