A Critique on Sabotaging the Brand through Parody
Harold’s text on Anti-Logos: Sabotaging the Brand through parody sheds light on the checks and balances that the public uses against multinational corporations who get away with corruptive business practices behind the scenes. Corporations prioritize capitalistic and monetary value over moral value in their business sometimes. This has given way to less than ethical manufacturing, production or delivery process of their goods. One example that Harold mentions is Nike’s use of sweatshops in creating their infamous sneakers with the swoosh. In an attempt to combat this practice, adbusters, groups that seek to expose the reality behind glamorous advertising, use ad parodies and subvertising to do so. ““Those who produce ad parodies hope to render opaque a mode of public address that tends toward transparency by virtue of its utter ubiquity.” (9) In hopes that viewers would wake up with the realization that advertisements are meant to manipulate and mask the unethical practices behind a corporation, adbusters makes parodies of familiar corporate advertising campaigns that individuals can relate to.
An interesting question that Harold’s text raises, and that I agree with, is the effectiveness of ad parodies and subvertising. While it captures people’s attention and may even go viral on social media, this ad sabotage is limited because the rhetoric seeks to negate and repudiate the status quo based off one rhetoric and fails to explore other alternatives or solutions for the consumer. Working off of the corporation’s message (Adbusters’ creation of the Black Unswoosher), these ad spoofs not only add to the brand awareness of the targeted corporation but also, ironically, aligns itself with the same marketing tactics it criticizes.
An ad parody by SNL which parodied the Pepsi Commercial in early April last year garnered more than 5.9M views on YouTube. The parody begins with the writer-director of the Pepsi Commercial sharing his concept with friends and family members minutes before the shoot is carried out. His excitement slowly fades into disappointment and worry as his ideas are shot down every person he speaks to. The parody functions as both a social commentary and humorous skit as it plays off the critiques of the Pepsi campaign. The director’s explanation of his ad campaign as “an homage to the resistance, reminiscent of Black Lives Matter” is met with resistance from a member of the black community who asks him to drop the idea and “run to his car.” The skit even ends with Kendall Jenner on the phone with a friend saying “I stop the police from shooting black people by handing them a Pepsi. I know, its cute, right?” The parody does an excellent job of highlighting the main critiques of the campaign in resistance to the dominant narrative of the Pepsi campaign. It critiques the Pepsi commercial for being tone-deaf and even raises the question of whether there was a non-white member consulted in the creation of the idea.
But as Harold mentions in her text, there are limitations to sabotaging the brand through parody. The 5.9M views on YouTube of this parody must have also translated to some sort of brand awareness of the Pepsi brand itself. Circulated by social media users and media platforms, the ad parody contributes to the mentions and popularity of Pepsi. While Pepsi gains negative press, its brand and logo become more recognizable to global citizens. Another limitation of ad parodies is the oversimplification of the dynamic relationships between media images. In this instance, SNL’s ad parody does a good job of exposing all the facets of criticisms of the Pepsi campaign. But other ad parodies don't’ do as great a job.
An example is a parody of the Nike Colin Kaepernick campaign. The original ad is of Colin Kaepernick with the caption “Believe in something even if it means sacrificing everything” in a commentary of the need for citizens to stand up for racial inequality in the U.S. This image was quickly appropriated with other images of celebrities and even politicians. One, in particular, replaced the caption “Just do it” with “Just Brexit”. While this ad parody calls for a one-sided view of Brexit as arguably“rash” and “uncalled for”, it fails to acknowledge any value in the arguments for Brexit such as better control for immigration and favorable trade deals among others. This is evidence that in subvertising, not all grounds are covered. There can be misunderstanding and miscommunications that create groupthink and extreme views that may not be favorable for consumers as well. This is seen in not only SNL sketches but also TV show hosts parodies and even PETA, who tend to oversimplify complex messages and perspectives on an issue.
Image credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/brexit/comments/9dhr35/just_brexit/