How fast can someone hack or hijack your brand?

I messed with a friend’s brand through an online prank that took 12 minutes from inspiration to execution. It only took seven minutes between when I bought a domain and shared the result with him.

Here's the story of a bit of friendly mischief, how it went down, and why it's a sign of everything going bonkers.

The background: I'm in a group chat with PR and comms guru to the stars Peter Shankman. In this chat, I shared a wrong email I received meant for another David Berkowitz (not a serial killer, I think) in another state who was getting his nose waxed and paid $17 cash for it. I found this amusing. That should have been the end of the story.

But then Peter chimed in saying that he still gets emails confusing him with the team at shankmanlawyers.com. This was last Friday, 9:33 a.m.

I clicked the domain to check it out. It was dead. That was weird. I asked Gemini if a law firm had ever been at that URL. It said no and suggested some other possibilities.

Later, Peter told me he was mistaken, and it was a different domain that led to others mistaking him for a lawyer. But before I bothered asking him, I bought shankmanlawyers.com from Cloudflare for $11.17. Then, I spent a few minutes burning some of my Lovable credits for a punchline.

At 9:40 a.m., seven minutes after getting Peter's post and two minutes after acquiring the domain, I entered this prompt into Lovable:

"I need a quick and dirty prank site for ShankmanLawyers.com that shows all these pictures of legendary PR guru Peter Shankman saying all the kinds of legal cases he can't help with because he is NOT a lawyer so do NOT contact him under any circumstances for legal needs (but then say he can still help them with comms crises and give talks on neurodivergence and AI -- make the sales pitch more subtle). Should be over the top like it's a scam lawyer site. Peter's a friend and will die laughing. I have the domain."

Yes, my vibe-coding prompts tend to sound like I’m on speed.

Lovable went to work. I was already starting to laugh out loud at the first draft, and then I gave Lovable a screenshot of Google Images showing an array of photos of Peter. I told Lovable, "Make sure photos of him are gratuitously all over the site."

Then it started to make those updates and suggest new features as it finished each round. I kept approving the suggestions while offering light creative direction.

By 9:44 a.m., the site was plastered with Peter's photo. It incorporated various interests of his, from skydiving to dogs, and it was off the wall. The domain, acquired six minutes earlier, was now fully connected to Lovable, and I published it.

I then went back to the group chat. No one else had responded to Peter since 9:33 a.m. That led to a perfect opening for me to reply, "You sure? Cause I just went to https://shankmanlawyers.com/ and it sure as *@&$ looks like you." My text in the chat was not censored.

Twelve minutes from inspiration to promotion.

Seven to build, connect, and share it.

I spent a little more time tinkering with it. The fake subway ads were my idea and took a bit of explaining to Lovable. But Lovable gets the credit for pushing it so far that it even drew a fake moustache on Peter's face — which is exactly what would happen that ad was really on a subway station wall. Blame Mamdani.

This is a prank that, depending on where inflation stands now, probably costs as much as a whoopee cushion. But what if it was something more?

On one level, it's a demonstration and reminder of just how great a first version of a vibe-coded project can be. In the time it takes to get through the introductions during some Zoom calls, you can formulate an idea, create a brand, launch it, and publicize it. That is, to borrow language I use in my private texts, *@&$ing insane.

But on another level, say Peter wasn't a friend of mine — one who gave me the green light to share this with all of you.

What if I was a detractor jealous of how well Peter's social posts perform, and I wanted to knock him down a few pegs (self-defeating as it would be)?

Say it wasn't Peter I was joking with but a brand I was lambasting.

Say I'm a jerk. I'm vengeful. I'm having a bad day and want to inflict pain on others.

I've got some powerful tools at my disposal.

And if my target isn't Peter but a business with poorer search, social, and AI visibility, I might be able to do some damage to their brand.

If I have my own search, social, and AI visibility, I have even more ways to inflict harm.

In less time than it used to take to write a complaint letter (we just use AI for that now anyway), anyone can hijack the identity of a person, business, or brand.

Is your brand at risk? To paraphrase an apocryphal Chinese proverb, the best time to deploy a generative engine optimization (GEO) strategy was three years ago; the second best time is now.

And to quote Stan Lee's closing panel in the first comic book to feature Spider-Man, "...With great power, there must also come great responsibility."

The power and the responsibility are ours.

— David Berkowitz, Chief Community Officer, Marketecture Media

1

Priceline's Penny Moves Into Your Snapchat DMs

Who: Brand Marketers, Travel Marketers, Social and Platform Leads, Performance Marketers

What: Priceline is the first travel brand to run Snapchat's AI Sponsored Snaps, a conversational ad format that lets advertisers bring their own chatbots into the app's inbox. Users get a direct message from Priceline and can chat with Penny, its agentic assistant. Trip details shared in Snapchat carry over to Penny conversations on Priceline's own platform, where the company says the agent converts users at roughly twice the rate of non-users. The timing is deliberate: Thanksgiving airfare on Priceline was up 20% year over year as of late October, and the brand is positioning around combating travel costs, with Penny (revamped in June with Anthropic's Claude) as the deal-finding face of that pitch.

Why it matters: The ad unit and the product are the same thing. The chatbot you meet in the ad is the one that books your trip, with memory intact across platforms. The funnel collapses when the ad can actually do the job it advertises.

(Marketing Dive)

2

AI Wrote the Brief, and It Shows

Who: Agency Executives, Brand Marketers, Strategy and Planning Leads, CMOs

What: Agencies say client briefs are ballooning into jargon-stuffed documents with no through-line, and AI is the culprit: M&C Saatchi North America CEO Nadja Bellan-White estimates 85% of briefs reaching her agency were written with AI tools, calling the trend "a little bit ridiculous.” The habit is widespread; 56.4% of marketers and agencies use AI to build briefs. Executives describe "some of the worst briefs I've ever seen in my career." The cost isn't just aesthetic: 29% of British marketers admit inaccurate or misleading AI-generated insights have cost their companies money (GWI), and MIT Media Lab research found AI-assisted writers showed a 55% reduction in brainwave activity.

Why it matters: The productivity story has a bill coming due, and it's landing on the desk of whoever has to read the 10-page brief that says nothing. Agencies that sell thinking should treat this as an opening: When everyone's strategy documents sound the same, a sharp two-page brief becomes a competitive weapon.

(Digiday)

3

Coke's Bet: The Shiny Object Is the Same Old Truck

Who: Brand Marketers, Strategy and Creative Leads, Agency Leaders, CMOs

What: Coca-Cola has made an AI-generated version of its "Holidays Are Coming" ad for the third consecutive year, and Europe CMO Javier Meza is unapologetic: "I'm not concerned about what's going to be the 'wow' this year," he told Marketing Week, arguing consistency and memory-building beat chasing the next shiny object. The stance comes as the brand weathers a third straight year of online backlash to its AI Christmas creative — criticism System1's Andrew Tindall dismissed in The Drum as a vocal minority, noting Coke wouldn't keep making the ads if the outrage actually hurt. The 2026 push pairs the AI spot with the returning truck tour (consumers voted on stops) and a limited-edition Creamy Vanilla launch.

Why it matters: Three years in, Coke's AI Christmas ad is no longer an experiment. It's a case study in whether online backlash matters when the brand metrics say otherwise. The industry's loudest AI fight and its most traditional holiday campaign are now the same thing, and Coke is betting the audience that argues on social media is smaller than the one that buys soda.

(Marketing Week)

The Silver Medal Award is a tradition of The Chicago Advertising Federation that has been honoring luminaries in the advertising and marketing community for decades, and we are inviting you to this year's reception for our recipient, Rocco Smeriglio.

Attend Silver Medal 2026

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