Prankster pokes fun at Liberal Party with phoney billboard ads
What was claimed |
The verdict |
Photos of billboards around Melbourne display an ad campaign by Barbecues Galore with the slogan "almost as many cookers as the Liberal Party". |
False. There are no such billboard ads. Images of the billboards were created on Photoshop by a Twitter user who uploaded them to the social media platform. |
By Ellen McCutchan
A viral series of photos that purports to show an ad campaign from Barbecues Galore suggesting the retail chain has "almost as many cookers as the Liberal Party", is fake, according to the Twitter user who first uploaded the images.
The photos were posted to Twitter by Adrian Elton, whose user profile says he is a Melbourne based designer and musician. They show a number of digital billboards, owned by QMS Media, featuring Barbecues Galore branding, a photo of a barbecue, and the slogan apparently poking fun at the Liberal Party.
"Love it when a brand takes a stand!" his tweet, said on Monday afternoon. "Spotted all over Melbourne this morning.
"Of course, as they're digital billboards it's hard to know whether or not the system was hacked? But if they're legit, BBQs Galore deserves a mighty salute!"
"Cooker" is Australian slang for "a crazy person", according to Wiktionary, an online dictionary run by the Wikimedia Foundation, which also runs Wikipedia.
The photos were widely shared on Twitter and reposted to Facebook where users’ comments suggest people believed the billboards were genuine. "Well played, Barbeques Galore Australia!," one Facebook post stated. "Too funny."
Within 24 hours Mr Elton's tweet racked up more then 1,000 retweets and attracted 4,500 likes, before he confessed in a tweet that the images had been created by him using Photoshop.
Barbecues Galore CEO Angus McDonald confirmed the ads were not commissioned by the BBQ retailer.
"We are aware of the parody advertisements circulated yesterday, but I will leave it to the political commentators to give candidates in the upcoming Victorian election a good grilling,'' Mr McDonald told RMIT FactLab.
"The only thing we are cooking up right now are some cracking deals on BBQ’s in our Black Friday sale," he said.
Mr Elton’s confessional tweet said: "Like ‘The Cat In The Hat’ that cleans up the house after he’s had his fun, I just wanted to confess, that I indeed done did it.
"100% apologies to #barbequesgalore - hope you didn’t have to deal with any irate cookers! And 0% apologies to the pathetic broilers of @LiberalVictoria."
His tweet was accompanied by an image of his computer screen showing one of the photos open in the Photoshop app.
The verdictFalse. Photos that appear to show electronic billboards featuring a Barbecues Galore ad campaign with the slogan "almost as many cookers as the Liberal Party" were photoshopped. They are not genuine adverts. The social media user who uploaded the images admitted he had created them.
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