With Heath Ledger and American Apparel, ad reality is unreal

Batman is back, and this wicked trailer for Dark Knight skips over Heath Ledger's death for Lego-style user-generated content. Except Bill Green notes it may not be a real brickfilm created by cool amateur artists, and instead, a staged brickfilm created by a real film studio to emulate cool amateur artists, which in turn would increase its chance of going viral...

You know. Passed around on blogs like this.

The challenge of all this amateur-content-creation-amplitude-modulation is more than diminishing standards in quality, as every blogger posts video with lousy lighting -- it's also getting hard to tell what message is real. A recent American Apparel poster in SoHo, from a brand known for outrageousness, is so over the top critics wondered if it's a spoof. (Be warned, this is not for the squeamish.)

As consumer feedback goes viral, we're also wondering, how does a brand maintain the integrity of its message? Advertising gets knocked as the hidden persuaders. But advertising also communicates and educates. What happens when your message spins out of your control? Absolut Vodka found out here.

Ideas spurred by the harsh brilliance at Copyranter.