The Evolution of Video Spoofery

Check out this parody of the Dove spot on the evolution of beauty. We came to it via Giovanni Rodriguez, who writes, “Prediction: the mockummercial will become a big thing next year, as more and more marketers get the inspiration to taunt their competitors via YouTube with nicely produced parodies of popular commercials.”

Rodriguez points out that the inherent inexplicit nature of parody makes it unclear who is the target of “Evolution of a Slob” — Dove, or ugly people? That’s an increasing problem as web video matures; imitations can be confusing and occasionally even deceptive. (Eye of beholder issues and so on.)

For instance, Kevin Burton of Tailrank got quite riled up tonight about a spoof video news site put together by a compliance company called BigFix in some kind of misguided viral advertising campaign. The site does have a spoof disclaimer tucked away at the bottom of the page, but in ads and posts on sites like Digg that send in visitors, there’s no such warning.

We’re don’t think it would be effective or feasible to actively police such mislabeling; let’s just hope the stuff that’s actually witty rises to the top.