Earlier this year, a French web site claimed to offer a service that would complete schoolchildren’s homework, for a fee. That effort turned out to be a marketing exercise: no homework was ever actually paid for. But the effort received extensive media coverage, and its creators have a good story to tell in job interviews.

I suspect that a recent initiative from Denmark had a similar end, for example measuring the propagation of buzz or demonstrating how much noise creative types could produce on short notice.

Whatever the end, the means were bizarre. The Danish tourist authority set up a web site and posted a video on YouTube in which an attractive Danish woman, Karen, presented her infant son, August. She wanted to show the child to the man who conceived him, a casual acquaintance with whom she had unprotected intercourse after a night’s drinking. Dorte Killerich of the Danish tourist authority reportedly called the initiative “the most effective thing we have ever done to market Denmark.”

The Danish media reported on the initiative and showed it to be fake. The site and the video were soon taken down.