We created a fake delivery company to get a job

This is not even remotely cool. This shows a complete disregard for personal and professional boundaries and cultural norms. I have no idea how anyone thought cyber-stalking business people with a mixture of fraud, disregard for the dead, and non-consensual AI cloning was a good idea. Imagine placing your brand in the hands of a marketing agency with this level of judgement.

I've worked in fairly sensitive roles, and if a package like this arrived at my workplace the police would become involved immediately. And if asked whether I'd want to press charges, I would say yes, absolutely. When you've received death threats at work, and seen female colleagues receiving rape threats, your tolerance for this kind of crap wears thin.

Creative solution to a problem they had - no job and apparently only a backpack to their name, but the story quickly fell appart when I realised that they bought delivery robots, laser engravers, clothing, seals, double digit ipads, etc. Clearly they are loaded and just trying to downplay their invasion of privacy and perhaps downright illegal cloning of voice and appearance to get a job. Good job on that one company calling them out.

This is everything I hate about the internet in one story. Using ads to target people, using AI to clone someones' voice and identity, dogs. The person who said they were excited, confused, scared but curious sums up how I feel about this although I'm not curious because I know where it leads.

Well, it's certainly creative. Which is probably a good thing if you're running a marketing company like these guys are, especially given how packed the field is right now.

But to say it was a risky move would be the understatement of the century. Delivering mail to companies that didn't ask for it, and in person? Using dead people to advertise? AI created deepfakes of the people targeted as a persuasion tactic? This could have easily gone very poorly for you, and lead to all sorts of criminal charges. Remember, we're in a world where a few glowing lights for a TV show ad caused a bomb scare:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic

Where harmless packages caused buildings to get evacuated, and Facebook had to change its ad settings because people were using it to target specific individuals.

The fact only one company sent a cease and desist, and no one got scared enough to get the police involved was probably a miraculous stroke of luck. So, points for creativity, though you got incredibly lucky the end result was so positive here.

>It hit me. What if we use the ''custom audiences'' thingy, but just populate it with 299 deceased people and 1 person whom we really need to show this ad to?

What a sentence. And what an article, too: using the deceased as a marketing ploy, sending cryptic emails, AI + voice impersonation. I'm surprised they only got one cease and desist letter at the end. I wonder if this is the endgame of social mobility as more and more humans become replaced through automation: a competition for the attention of those at the top.

> Imagine one day randomly finding yourself in a foreign country thousands of kilometres away from home. Your own country is suddenly at war, and all you have is a backpack hanging off your back.

Well, a backpack and thousands of Euros to spend on robotic dogs, tablets, pen plotters, holographic envelopes, etc.

The cynic in me tells me those CEOs are not the only ones being sold a fairytale, specially considering how proud they are of how far they'll go to get eyeballs.

This is really cool, but the narrative also has a few strong "Wait this is creepy" moments... There is a lot of creating problem solving and some awesome creations sprinkled in. But damn would I both love and hate to get one of those deliveries.

They cloned people with AI tools and created a bunch of deep-fakes which they then delivered to that person.

They used a (self made) list of dead people to improve targeted ads so they could cohort-advertise to a small list of people.

They created fake uniforms to deliver packages to offices, and seemed pretty successful.

I feel like this would make a great case study on targeted phishing and social-engineering.

Most people from Western Europe couldn't afford to just go to London like that and waste time and money in this way. I am much more curious about the state of these people's company's financials than anything else.

Also, elaborately targeting specific people like that and presenting them with the fact that you can fake their voice on top of any kind of outrages statements while you know exactly where they work and how to get there sets a hellish precedent and I'd even consider it a veiled attempt at a threat.

It is not what I'd consider culturally appropriate behavior in the UK, business-wise. I'd try to adapt, if at all possible, to the new environment you've found yourselves in unwillingly.

Very interesting, very impressive, and a little concerning that this is what it takes to get noticed! I actually went in expecting something along the lines of "I started a profitable company in order to pad my resume and get some interviews; it worked, so now I can shut the company down."

What are they actually selling? Their website, https://www.outstandly.com/, is a single landing page with "Creative solutions for boring problems."

Here is a boring problem, creatively show me your work.

Since this is on HN, I walked into this half-expecting the story to be about some backend dev who's been out of work so long that they created a fake company for their LinkedIn profile to meet the requisite "5 years of X", where X is the most popular PL searched for in their locale's LinkedIn.

This is much, much more interesting than that! Nice work.

Random idea based on article:

I'd love to see a future Sci-fi TV episode where a character gets not one, but multiple such "from the future gift boxes with video messages from a future self" -- but from multiple future selves, that is, multiple future parallel universe versions of the character!

In other words, "here is a set of potential future you's -- along with the instructions to activate them -- important upcoming life decisions to make or not to make, depending on the desired outcome..."

And what would make it really interesting (as the plot unfolds!)... is that all of these apparently disparate sets of decisions -- are actually intertwined, entangled, and potentially mutually contradictory (i.e., choosing one set unchooses all of the others!)

Now, for extra points, for the future SF writer or writers working on this -- make it so that the main character, after discovering the "either-or" mutual exclusion principle inherent in these choices -- tries to somehow cheat fate and destiny by attempting to somehow obtain ALL of them at the same time!

Will the character be successful in his quest against the apparent exclusivity of fate?

Or will he somehow manage to attain all of these future possibilities, all at the same time?

Well, that's the episode plot for this future TV Sci-Fi episode and/or movie (should it ever be written!)

Anyway, interesting article!

I went on AliExpress to look up how much robot dogs cost, and after filtering out the ones that are obviously plastic toys, the ones that look like the photos they posted were thousands of dollars.

Seems like a weird priority for a project like this.

Using marketing tricks to get a job in marketing seems like a full equivalent of a hacking of security services provider to get hired as a security expert. I suppose most HN visitors would assume the former to be ok as long as nobody harmed? Why so many commentators feel upset about the story then?

P.S. Though I do not like an attempt to pose as poor nobodies while they obviously could afford spending money on iPads to give away

For those of you pointing out the (obvious to some of us) problems with this approach, all I can say… having occasionally crossed paths (and done work with) the cutting edge of creative industries in London… this kind of extreme quirky/subversive/unorthodox pushing of the envelope is exactly the kind of thing they hire for and do every day. The advertising campaigns you experience yourselves, the ones that make it to mainstream B2C and B2B, are merely the tip of the iceberg. Under the surface (the extremely targeted campaigns you never hear of because you are not the intended audience) you’ve got all kinds of what you would think of as “dirty tricks” going on, and most of the time it works too.

What an awesome story. The amount of effort put in is nuts!

Also, LOL at Condé Nast. How on brand of them to C&D you!

While this is pretty cool, I feel like I must echo the sentiment here and also say that this is pretty creepy. I am fine with the "using dead people profiles to improve specificity of online ads" but the deepfakes part is very creepy. I am quite sure at least some of the targets would have started to doubt whether this is fake or real at some point. Imagine doing this on someone with the intention of radicalizing them. You can easily send messages like "The LBGTQ movement started out good. It even helped society a lot. But then it got overtaken by more and more inclusion. We came to realise that tolerance and inclusion just isn't something humans can do long term but by the time we did, it was too late. You need to do the right thing. Don't support them."

The part where they can just buy uniforms and go into an office to make a delivery sounds like very lax security with not much that can be done to fight against it.

creepy, reminds me of the webpage someone made years ago that shows a stalker looking through all the personal information and friend lists of the user visiting the page

Many of us found themselves trying their luck in London. They don't seem to financially need it, looking at the expenses.

This site breaks Brave on Android. The page becomee slow, goes to "Oh Snap" in seconds and finally Brave gets terminated.

I have to say man.. as I read this stuff I can't but help to understand why Bill Hicks, Douglas Adams and many others talk about marketing the way do. I found myself repulsed, because I am absolutely willing to believe that this is not an isolated frame of mind.

I will say one nice thing. There is a level of whimsy to the idea, but good grief the execution of it is a violation of everything I consider appropriate. But then. as my marketing prof once said, marketing lives on the greyish side of legal. Moral is not even a thing.

I’m on the “pro” side of the vigorous debate here — this is charming, hilarious and creative. The marketing ‘targets’ are all by and large public figures, the ego ploy to get to them seems to have been generally received as intended, … how could you not at least look at these two for creative work / guerilla marketing / some super cool campaign?

High level marketing thinkers all understand that they are playing in the field of human manipulation; some campaigns / ideas are transgressive, some are transgressive merely for the time they are in, some push the boundaries and lose. From the results here, this pushed the boundaries and won.

To me the mild lean-in on creepiness throughout, including some of the ai videos just says ‘creative geniuses’ - they set up a full campaign that benefits from limits of current tech, and got themselves a contract at Saatchi, in a country that’s famously rigorous and bounded in terms of class restrictions.

Nice work guys, keep coming up with cool hacks and good luck in your business.

> Designing a fake delivery company seemed to be the most logical, straightforward way of contacting a person.

That does not sound logical or straightforward to me at all.

> To keep the intrigue going, we resorted to just sending cryptic emails to everyone a couple of days before the delivery

So, they’re spammers? And physical spam too?

This post reads as rather unethical to me… I wouldn’t want to work with them.

Nice. I also really, really love the visual execution of your blog post. Of course, not every article i read should copy this, but here it seems to be perfect.

I envisioned a similar look for some video shots from my office. I know, lighting setup is key here, but which camera did you use?

Specifically the gif / video-loop with for "waiting".

Really well done everything.

This may be a bit of a cultural impedance mismatch. I can sort of understand their position and sympathize with their situation, but it also seems creepy if I put myself in the shoes of their delivery targets.

Why does the website have a scroll bar? My browser’s window already has one.

> We needed a job, a contract, a windfall!

Nope. You need to learn how to use money and find a way to spend less than you make. You had it good while you could count on arbitrage and you want to keep the gig going. Magically, the first thing that comes to mind is to you fuck around with robots, AI, and deceased people's pasts while your countrymen and women are dying fighting Russians. Grow up.

Bravo. After all this and using the tool what are some takeaways on ai and how it will disrupt (or not) these very same companies?

Very very impressive! Lots of success coming their way if they keep going!

> so we’d better check from the back door. What if it's unlocked, they are waiting for the pizza guy and there is actually a party and free drinks?

> Designing a fake delivery company seemed to be the most logical, straightforward way of contacting a person.

I understand part of this is tongue in cheek but wtf?

I’d love to have these guys on a creative team.

This is awesome, I love it.

What vile people. Each step is a further descent into hell.

Nice!

Disturbing. Real sociopath energy. They'll probably be millionaires in no time, honestly.

God, this sucks so hard. Was your last venture NFTs by any chance?

The email post is from earlier and this are by far my fav articles on HN on bro

loved this story, wickedly creative. This type of creativity should be encouraged.