You came here for chocolate. What you found is something else.

Marlo isn’t a real brand. It’s part of a university capstone project called Artificial Identity: Exploring the New Face of Brand Realism. This project asks a simple question: how real can fake advertising feel?

With the rise of AI tools like Midjourney, RunwayML, and ChatGPT, it’s now possible to create advertising campaigns that look, sound, and feel authentic, even when the brand behind them doesn’t exist. Marlo Chocolate was designed to test this. Posters, mock packaging, and social media visuals were placed in familiar contexts to create the illusion of a premium chocolate label.

The reveal happens here. By disclosing that the brand is artificial, we can better understand how audiences react to questions of trust, authenticity, and creativity in an age where AI blurs the line between fiction and reality.