By now, you must have seen Subservient Chicken, Burger King's weird site that looks quite a bit like an amateur porn site gone wrong (e.g, man in chicken suit -- MarketingVox provides a roundup of news coverage). Well now comes something even creepier.

The Public Radio International program Marketplace reports on a very edgy online ad campaign (click here and scroll down to "Bleeding Edge Advertising?"). It tell of how, if you go to Google and search for "cloning," you will see an ad off to the right for the Godsend Institute. What is that? It is a cloning clinic. Yes, they clone human beings. Testimonials on the site tell stories about how grieving families recreate dead children.

The site is very well put together with lots of details. Only thing is, it's a hoax. But one you have to look at it very carefully to realize that. It's actually a promotion for a new movie from Lions Gate Films, Godsend, starring Robert De Niro and Greg Kinnear. The hoax site goes so far as to invite people to call for further information, where the curious here a voice mail that still sounds like the real thing. Only after they have left their name and number on the voice mail recording does the studio call back and explain it's a movie promotion. (There is also at least one link to the movie site on the hoax site, so those who look more carefully may figure it out.)

The Marketplace story quotes Ad Age columnist and Bob Garfield, who says the promotion crosses the boundaries of good taste. He suggests that we should imagine a grieving parent finding this site and considering the real possibilities of it only to find out it is a hoax, at which point, Garfield says, "it becomes genuinely grotesque, a grotesque exercise in creating false hope."

I tend to agree. Thoughts?
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