Burger restaurant New York Minute conducted the marketing campaign in the Melbourne suburb of Altona, where they had recently opened up a new store.

The fake fines, which were taped to people's cars, read "this is not a fine" and goes on to explain that instead of getting a ticket, those who receive it have "scored a free burger" redeemable at their Altona branch.

One target of the campaign, who found the 'fine' taped to his car, posted an image of the photo online. The caption read: "Rate out of 10 on a scale of annoying to creative."

The prompt led to a heated debate online over whether the campaign was genius marketing or just cruel.

Many felt that the stunt would "give someone a heart attack to think [they've] got a fine".

One commenter wrote they "hate it cause it would set my anxiety off".

"Not only is it super annoying, doing this on windscreens is considered littering," said another commenter.

Others argued that "getting a free burger out of it is actually kinda neat".

New York Minute's CEO Antony told Yahoo News that the chain had had an "incredible response" to the campaign, explaining that the motive was to "spread good".

Despite the conflicting opinions, Antony claims that of the 1,000 tickets placed on dashboards, over 30 per cent have come in to redeem their free burger.

"Not one of those 300 people who came in got upset, they had a laugh," he said.