Amazing parody actually enhances original campaign

Last week a very well done Dove ad, done by Ogilvy, went viral. It was a continuation of the work that Dove's been doing towards reaching and recognizing real women as opposed to the stereotypical model imagery seen in most ads for beauty products.

The company (Dove is owned by Unilever) and its agency have done a good job celebrating normal women, and the ad/video that came out last week was quite moving.

Barely a week later, a parody video has come out from New Feelings Time representing the "average man" in the same scenario. Parodies are hardly a new thing. Since YouTube went mainstream basically everything that gets 15 seconds of fame has an accompanying parody video. What's unique this time around is that, for me, when the parodies hit the innernette the original topic of conversation is played out (harlem shake, Psy, etc), happens too long after the original event hit the news, or the video quality and content in the parody is horrible.

In this case, the parody is funny, timely, and has decent production quality. Because it has those three elements, it extends the relevance of the original ad.

Here are the ads in case you missed them:

Original Ad: Dove Real Beauty Sketches


Parody Ad: Real Beauty Sketches Men


Nike Ad: Find Your Greatness

Nike's been doing a great job of upstaging the Olympic's official sponsor, Adidas, with their Find Your Greatness campaign. Without cable, I haven't even been able to watch the Olympics with any regularity, but know about these ads.

I think this one is my favourite, but all the ads I've seen so far have been very well done.

 

Watch more from this campaign on Nike's Youtube channel.

Bizarre advertisement for Surface

From some of the reviews I've read, it sounds like they've got a pretty cool product. It's powerful, takes advantage OS features that other manufacturers haven't managed to do, works well with others, and has a snazzy cover that doubles as a keyboard.

I don't get that from the ad. I'm seeing Buckyballs, mercury, rock chipping, and aggressive kickstanding.

Although with their music selection, it seems like some sort of interpretation of interpretive dance. I don't get interpretive dance either.