Hunter College students in New York couldn't miss the poster plastered around the Upper East Side campus. Reading "MISSING -- $500 reward!!" it was accompanied by a photo of a young, blonde, Heidi Cee, pleading for the return of her lost Coach bag.

Tear-off tabs listed Cee's phone number, blog, MySpace page and Facebook profile. Visitors to the blog (encounterheidi.blogspot. com), which drew more than 15,000 hits after the posters went up, learned that the bag was a gift from an ex-boyfriend serving in Iraq.

One day, Cee blogged that another student had returned the bag. A day later, she wrote that on closer inspection, the bag was a fake and she had been scammed for the reward.

Outraged ("EFFING COUNTERFEIT!" she wrote), Cee blogged that she was researching the world of counterfeit goods. She discovered, she wrote, that they're linked to criminal activity, child labor and terrorism. She even posted a video to YouTube about counterfeiting, "Break the Chain," and organized an anti-counterfeiting event on campus that drew a crowd with free food and T-shirts.

But here's the thing about Cee: She's fake, too. A public relations class at Hunter invented her last spring. The course was funded by a $10,000 grant from Coach and was part of a college outreach campaign by the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC), a trade group that includes Coach and other brands like Apple, Levi Strauss & Co., Louis Vuitton and Rolex.

Now red flags are flying. Some of the most pointed criticism has come from PR professionals, who say the Hunter campaign runs afoul of basic PR tenets such as truthfulness and transparency. And as advertisers clamor for viral marketing approaches, the Hunter fracas serves as the latest illustration of how a buzz-seeking stunt may backfire.

More specifically, some faculty at Hunter, part of the City University of New York system, see the class as an example of corporate encroachment on campus and criticize the school's administration, which allegedly demanded that the Coach-sponsored program be offered as a class. Critics claim the motive was to butter up Coach's CEO, Lew Frankfort, a Hunter alumnus, who several months later donated $1 million to the school.

The Old College Try

The Coach incident traces back to 2005, when the IACC launched a campaign, "Get real," to dissuade consumers from buying knock-offs. Ongoing, it's run by Paul Werth Associates, a PR firm based in Columbus, Ohio.

One component is the College Outreach Program, which, according to a 34-page kit the trade group prepared for professors, aims to "change the hearts and minds of America's youth and build a long-term grassroots advocacy movement for the 'Get real' campaign." The kit explains that after one of the trade group's members donates a budget ($5,000 to $10,000), the class will play the role of an "agency" pitching an anticounterfeiting campaign to the "client" -- the sponsor or IACC itself. Campaigns will be developed, and executed, by each class.