• Australia's largest state hits record-high COVID-19 cases despite weeks of strict lockdown. 'It's a tinderbox ready to explode,' one official said.
• eToro says crypto made up 73% of trading commissions in the last quarter, as retail customers dived in
• A flight attendant says she was too exhausted to report a passenger who shoved her when a flight was overbooked: report
• US jobless claims climb for first time in 5 weeks, to 353,000

IN AMERICA, PHONE operator AT&T is currently airing a great commercial featuring what appears to be amateur video of a high school football player dodging a tackle by performing a head-over-heels flip, before landing on his feet to make a touchdown.

But the flip was faked.

The ad is based on a YouTube video titled “High school scrimmage flip (hello!)” that has been seen by nearly 800,000 people. Here it is:

YouTube Credit

The ad, made by BBDO Atlanta, purports to tell the tale of what happened to the nameless player after that video went viral, and he is introduced to a college talent scout. Here’s the ad:

YouTube Credit: ShareATT

But AgencySpy recently called out the original video as fake, simply because it was made into an ad by BBDO. The video was published on YouTube on October 2; AT&T’s version appeared on October 27.

Business Insider can confirm, however, that the backflip was staged, and not a real video caught by a fan at a local game.

The account holder of the original video is “S.Mc.” Yahoo! Sports figured out that the account belongs to someone called Stephen McMennamy. That’s because there is a Google+ account for “S.Mc.” which lists a “Stephen McMennamy” as the holder of the YouTube account that uploaded the video.

Neither account has any more information than that.

But over on LinkedIn, it turns out that Stephen McMennamy is the creative director for BBDO Atlanta.

What are the odds that McMennamy was the one who owned the original rights to this stunning piece of high school sports video before it was made into an ad by AT&T?

We contacted a BBDO spokesperson and he confessed that the video was in fact staged for AT&T.

It’s a cute ad. And seeding a fake “amateur” video on YouTube for more than a month before airing the ad that pays homage to it was strategic genius. But it ain’t real.

The Redzone: NFL mid-season awards

‘It’s already beat!’ Fighting leukaemia, Chuck Pagano gives inspirational post-match speech