Before the 1999 horror film "The Blair Witch Project" became a box office smash, it was a hugely popular Web hoax. The faux documentary project shot by three student filmmakers supposedly lost in the woods near Burkittesville, Maryland was promoted on the Internet as a true story, attracting scores of interested viewers to local movie theaters to see the recovered "documentary" for themselves. The hype generated from the Internet stunt was unprecedented, leading the independent film to gross over $140 million.

This sort of guerrilla marketing, variously labeled "mischief marketing" or "Trojan horse marketing," has created more than mere "buzz" for ambitious moviemakers--it has created an ethics controversy for the industry. Marketers creating similar elaborate Internet hoaxes to promote new films are angering consumer groups, and may even be violating ethics regulations concerning deceptive or misleading marketing practices.

The latest film to draw the public's ire is called "Godsend," a thriller starring Robert De Niro and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos about a mysterious doctor who promises a grieving couple that that their young son killed in a tragic accident can be brought back to life through human cloning. The cloning technique central to the film's story, while science fiction, appears on the Internet as a real-life medical breakthrough, and can be viewed by the public at godsendinstitute.org. The elaborate Website for the Godsend Institute, complete with testimonials by families reunited with deceased children who have been cloned, is a marketing ploy by Lions Gate Entertainment to advertise the movie. The Institute doesn't actually exist.

Aside from the whole "creep factor" associated with trying to recover lost love ones through human cloning, "Godsend the Movie" raises questions about truth in advertising and marketing. Promoters for the film are putting one over on the public to enhance the movie's mystique, foisting a bizarre Internet hoax on unsuspecting Web surfers to generate interest in a film.

(June, 2004)