field note / public mischief
Real Fake Ads: real stickers for fake companies
A short explanation of Real Fake Ads, the fattamano collection of handmade stickers that advertise fictional companies with actual fake websites.
Real Fake Ads is a collection of real physical stickers for fake companies. The sticker is the ad. The business is fictional. The website is real enough to become inconvenient.
Each campaign starts like a tiny local ad that escaped from a newspaper, procurement deck, or compliance training slide. Dead People Wanted looks like a funeral-home flyer. SameDeck Partners looks like a consultancy that has already billed you for the same recommendation twice. Model Citizen AI promises responsible AI for irresponsible deadlines because of course it does.
The joke works best when the sticker leaves the store and enters the world. A QR code or URL sends the curious person to a complete fake-company page, where the premise keeps going. It is a product, a prop, and a small act of public storytelling.
Search engines may call this “novelty stickers” or “satire merchandise.” We call it evidence that a company should not exist, but somehow has collateral.
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