Gawker
Hunter College, the luxury brand Coach, fraudulent PR campaigns, and dishonest corporate collaboration with academia are the topics of the day today. Important topics! Adweek has just come out with a long investigative piece on a Coach-sponsored PR class at Hunter, which reeks of impropriety and dishonesty, and ended up tangling a bunch of college kids up in a fake online PR blog that makes them all look like a bunch of shady, dishonest undercover marketing hacks. "I knew a lot of hell would break loose about the class. And it did," said the teacher. Indeed. The condensed version of the whole sordid tale, after the jump.
Coach, along with an industry trade group, had a PR firm develop a program designed to get college kids to join an anti-counterfeiting campaign. They put together a packet of materials to pass to colleges to help them develop the curriculum for a PR class, and a company like Coach would foot the bill. Hunter College signed on, and the school's president pushed a teacher into teaching the class, against his wishes.
More specifically, some faculty at Hunter, part of the City University of New York system, see the class as an example of corporate encroachment on campus and criticize the school's administration, which allegedly demanded that the Coach-sponsored program be offered as a class. Critics claim the motive was to butter up Coach's CEO, Lew Frankfort, a Hunter alumnus, who several months later donated $1 million to the school.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the class ended up developing a PR campaign that featured fake fliers posted around campus promoting a sob story of a fake girl named "Heidi Cee," who had purportedly lost a Coach bag that an ex-boyfriend now serving in Iraq had given her. The class made a fake blog and fake Facebook and MySpace profiles for "Heidi." The blog is impressively overwrought and intricate, with a bunch of posts about her supposedly spontaneous anti-counterfeiting campaign interspersed with typical college student (fake) blog crap. Here, she gets interested in the cause:
U should google the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition... its where I learned most of this stuff. The have pictures that show you how to tell a real from a fake. They have a bunch of other companies that have joined the cause... lol kinda ironic, but COACH is on the list too!
LOL that is the people who iz paying to sponsor ur fake class and ur fake blog, LOL! Full disclosure sux!
Pretty lowdown and dirty, overall. Read the whole piece at Adweek right now, and then go buy some counterfeit Coach bags in retribution.
Comments
Sue them. Sue them all.
It's under Paul Janka's bunk bed.
This post was sponsored by Grand Theft Auto IV.
I would buy a knockoff but I don't want anything resembling a Coach bag to be in my ownership.
My dorm rooms had desk chairs like Heidi Cee's. God, I hated that thing. It rocked back and every time I tipped past 90° I'd panic and think I was going to fall backwards out of my chair.
Also, Coach logo bags are totally bougie.
@dummyfakeroller: What about a Crotch bag?
I'm sorry, what part of a girl losing her bag did that class think was newsworthy? That concept just reeks of lazy college groupthink.
What they're actually doing is guerrilla/viral marketing, which is for tools who think they're SO CREATIVE OMG and that no one will ever decipher their clever ruse.
Somebody is going to call the number on that flier, right?
@dummyfakeroller: Coach bags all look so incredibly tacky, which is why I buy all my purses from Target or as a "free gift with purchase."
@bytememehard: Is it decorated with penis or vagina? That's the dealbreaker.
My favorite wrongly pirated handbag was embossed with a "D&C" logo, since no one would ever confuse tacky Italian sportswear with abortions.
@tunamelt: I think my current purse came from Jcpennys. It has survived an ocean wave, being used to beat random people and dirt. Plus it has a gigantic zipper which better reflects my brand of tacky than a bunch of neutral "C's."
A woman cut me off in line at the pharmacy today. Then she "shopped" for candy after her purchase. But what I abhorred most was her fake Coach bag. I'm so judgemental.
Back to refilling my Fiji waterbottle with NYC tap to create phalate laden babies as a sperm donor.
@bytememehard: I hear the catbags at coach are nice.
A fake Facebook AND Myspace profile? What can we do against such masters of deception?
My brother bought me a Coach bag for my 22nd birthday. I asked him why he thought I was starting Boca Raton Middle School next fall.
That said, their non-humongous-C-emblazoned items aren't all bad.
@Clare: And they were so uncomfortable they forced me to stop studying and go out for beers.
when fake blogging to not capitalize use punctuation or misspell it will be more genuine that way THANKS, COACH!
I glanced over that "blog" and noticed that references were made to a stroke-suffering "uncle" in New Jersey who now has paralyzed lips!?! Coach has unleashed a PR Frankenstein's monster made up of Hunter College morons. As a result of this incident, the only Coach product I would consider purchasing in the future would be a hobo bag made from the skull and taint skin of Lew Frankfort.
WTF was COACh thinking?
And where the hell were Luther & Dawber on this one...?
I got a real Prada purse for $10 once (true story) and I always wanted to write on it with black permanent marker, SHIT IS REAL, because that would be very punk rock. But then I lost the purse. EVEN MORE PUNK ROCK.
My grandmother owned Coach trifocals. That should tell you all you need to know about Coach.
I'm so glad they worked Iraq into the story somehow. It really gives it heart, you know?
@Un Chien Andalou: Chien! I did not recognize you in the daylight! I thought you were nocturnal.
I hate counterfit viral ad campaigns.
@Un Chien Andalou: Nothin' better than a Goachi bag.
@Unfun:
Law & Order- Fashion Accessories Unit
Is the adjunct professor of this PR class named............Ronn Torrosiann?
Did the President's wife get free Coach? Dude should totally resign. Kick backs on text book and health insurance is one thing but fake bag campaigns reek.
An ex boyfriend serving in Iraq gave her a fancy bag? Totally implausible.
Herpes or a baby? Plausible. A fancy bag? No.
wow, where does coach go after that? go to the pope and contribute enough so that priests serve coach bags up as pennance for stealing??
Ahh, Hunter, the college that kicked me out.
Tis was awesome when it was going down at Hunter. I remember the ridiculous posters and the even more ridiculous "Break the Chain" anti-counterfiting festival with handy stickers about how counterfeit Coach bags are made by 4 year olds in China. (Unlike the real ones which are made by 8 year olds in Myanmar.)
My favorite part of the blog:"I feel nauseous. I want to vomit in this horrible, fake fake fake bag. Do you know what fake material smells like? SHIT. Actual shit. It makes me feel like shit just sitting next to it."
While Hunter was doing all this crazyness, one of my favorite scientists down the street at Rockefeller University drew me a flowchart of how to get the best Coach bags on Canal street.
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