Some of the best ads are phoney

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday January 22, 2015

For nine years the makers of Doritos corn chips, Frito-Lay, have invited members of the public to create their own Doritos commercial. This year the winner will see their ad played in Super Bowl time (the most expensive advertising time in America, on February 1st) and receive a million dollars prize. Already there is an Australian finalist, Armand De Saint-Salvy from Sydney.

But there is another Doritos commercial doing the rounds, also from Australia. It's the jolly, musical story of an attractive couple who meet, court and marry through their mutual passion for Doritos. They decide to honeymoon "at the beginning" - back in the tropics where the oil comes from. Only to find the rainforest has been devastated to allow the planting of huge palm oil plantations.

The ad, it turns out, comes from an environmental group Sum Of Us, connected with the Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace, and Union of Concerned Scientists. The objective is to pressure the parent, PepsiCo, to be more insistent in its policing of the habitat management practised by its third-world suppliers.

There are a lot of these spoof ads around if you search. They make popular subjects for final-year photography, art or cinema students, so they can be very polished and professional.

I particularly like the Yves Saint Laurant perfume ad with a beautifully shot bottle proudly named "Cocaine". Much like Dior's product "Opium". What betrays this as a spoof are the two neat lines of white powder in the photo foreground.

As you'll recall, I keep complaining about the lack of creativity in much of today's advertising. In fact some of the best ads are either spoofs, or very close to being send-ups.

One current ad is called a "content video" - think of it as a long tv commercial on YouTube. It features that dreaded figure - the fitness bore. Working his abs and pecs around a gym he talks lengthily about "the palaeo diet" (don't eat anything a caveman couldn't get); "the space diet" which you eat hanging upside down breathing from an oxygen tank; the hachuchu berry that turns fat into muscle overnight. You've met the type. The payoff though is right at the end when you see the sponsor. Grill'd Hamburgers with their low carb super bun. It sure doesn't look like a Hungry Jack's commercial.

But because it's so unexpected, you'll laugh and remember it longer.

YouTube is currently creating a raft of ads which spoof the extravagant Super Bowl ads coming up. American advertisers spend millions on commercials to launch between the game's first and second half. YouTube (i.e. parent Google) want to see whether their ads can pull viewers away from the network. When they are paying $5 million for a 30-second spot, the advertisers will not be pleased if too many viewers are lured away by the fake commercials.

For the social media, though, it is an audacious act, pitting themselves against the might of the networks on the biggest TV event of the year. If they do make a dent on the program's viewing numbers, they can then turn to the advertisers and show they have the same pulling power as the expensive stations.

The digitals - YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix and the rest - are now looking to build themselves broadcast empires too. And fuelled by their enormous income streams, there's no doubt that there is nothing phoney in that ambition.