A Fake Press Release Boosted IMAX’s Stock Price, hmm.

October 2, 2009 – 8:30 am – No Comment

announcement

The internet is a viral place. One tidbit of information can spread like wildfire and end up in the hands of people who act upon the information that they have received.

If you take October 1st for example, a fake press release was issued saying that Disney was making the move to buy IMAX. The press release was an obvious fake complete with bad grammar. Another thing is that if people had been paying attention to press releases about Disney, then they would have noticed that the fake press release was nothing but the real press release that came out when Disney decided to acquire Marvel (of course, the bits about Marvel was replaced by IMAX).

After the fake release was issued IMAX did issue a short announcement stating that the report was false and that it had no plans on selling out to Disney or any other company for that matter. However, even though IMAX said that the company’s shares moved up 6% in pre market trading due to the fake release.

Fake releases about publicly traded companies can either help or hurt the acutal company and really hurt the investor.

On the same day, there was a fake memo floating around the internet about McDonald’s leaving food out of customers’ orders in the drive thru. You can read the fake memo here.

I am not sure what would compel someone to issue a fake release other than drawing attention to themselves or if the company is trying to find some unethical writers out there that have no actual ties to the company to release the information. There are rules against that though. Then again, we’re asking people who really don’t have a lot of Public Relations integrity to follow all the rules. You can’t expect that much from some of these people.