MOVIES Sneaky ads provoke debate over ethics

The campaigns could hurt people seeking legitimate information, analysts say.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Movie ads never have been known for their veracity, but two new advertising campaigns have taken the misleading pitch to another level -- a level some say is alarming and potentially hurtful.
To promote "Laws of Attraction," a comedy about divorce lawyers, New Line Cinema has been running phony attorney ads in newspapers across the country. Meanwhile, Lions Gate Films has created an eerily realistic Web site to call attention to "Godsend," a chiller about cloning a baby to replace a dead child. Both movies opened last Friday.
"They prey on the vulnerable," charged Margaret McLean, assistant director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. "The state bar should complain," said Gerald Uelmen, a criminal defense attorney and professor at SCU's School of Law. "Those ads are despicable."
McLean is particularly incensed by the Web site, which she said "is playing on the grieving process, that sense of loss."
Is this trend another disquieting sign that truth in advertising is at an all-time low? Or is it just good business sense, a way of separating yourself from the five to six new studio releases each week?
Details of campaigns
Russell Schwartz, the president of domestic marketing for New Line who masterminded the $300,000 campaign for the comedy, said, "It's all about standing out in this very, very cluttered environment."
So New Line has placed ads for attorneys "Audrey Woods" (whose picture is actually Julianne Moore) and "Daniel Rafferty" (Pierce Brosnan) -- not in newspaper entertainment sections, but rather in food, style, garden and wedding sections because, Schwartz explained, "our movie has a strong female skew." There is nothing in the ads, apart from the misidentified shots of the stars, to suggest that they are for a movie.
Instead, the Woods ad plays on an estranged wife's anxiety "during this difficult time. ... Let's work together and show that scumbag that you are not weak and fragile," and the Rafferty ad promises to "put the screws to her so tight, she'll give you anything you want."
Citing the same cluttered marketplace, Lions Gate paid $15,000 for a fertility-clinic site called http://godsendinstitute.org where the viewer learns of a "procedure" to create a genetically identical fetus from a single cell. "Death doesn't have to be an ending," the Web site visitor is assured. "At Godsend Institute, we have the ability to make it a fresh start -- a New Beginning!"
The institute site eventually links to the official "Godsend" movie site. But again, there is nothing, save for a picture of Robert De Niro as institute founder Dr. Richard Wells, that says this is really a movie promotion.
Criticism of tactic
McLean and Bob Steele, a teacher at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla., call the site dishonest and potentially harmful to bereaved parents. "It's all in good fun as long as we're in on the joke, but in this case we're not," McLean said.
"Some form of satire is acceptable," Steele said, "but if the nature and intent of the ad is to confuse and deceive, that's a serious problem. ... This seemingly real pitch may be disrespectful, and by extension, emotionally harmful to those families searching for legitimate information on this topic."
Lions Gate President Tom Ortenberg defends the "Godsend" site -- inspired by pioneering Internet campaigns for "The Blair Witch Project" and "Gattaca" -- as a novel way of getting the word out about a topical, relatively low-budget ($22 million) film. So far, he says, there have been no complaints by visitors to the site, which has received an estimated 2 million hits.