Spoof adverts are adverts too
The point of an advert is to call attention to your brand/product, and inspire potential customers to part with some of their cash – in your favour. Many advertising campaigns around the world are spoofed – meaning that third parties take the brand campaign concept and use it to poke fun at the brand itself. Some of these spoofs develop a life of their own. Budweiser’s legendary “wazzup” campaign produced more spoofs than actual adverts. A little known fact, though, is that Budweiser actually funded some of the spoofsters, helping them to create a legend.
Ikea have done something similar with their “Elite Designers Against IKEA“.
But, now, in South Africa, we have some real fun. ABSA, the biggest retail banker in the country, has a new (fairly pretentious) campaign, in which breathy individuals exclaim that ABSA is “my rock”, “my hope”, “my future”, “my open road”. Well, a new series of spoof ads doing the rounds takes pot shots at ABSA, with pay off lines like: ABSA is “my elbow”, “my erectile dysfunction”, “my gay brother”, “my ringworm”, and the pay off line is: “My bank is… stoopid”.
Should ABSA respond? Methinks not. When Laugh It Off (a t-shirt manufacturer with spoof lines) took a potshot at FNB (another retail banker), the bank smiled and ordered a whole pile for their staff casual days. Other companies targetted by Laugh It Off didn’t (laugh it off, I mean) and took them to court. Laugh It Off hung tough, and in the Constitutional Court were recently awarded their right to freedom of expression.
For more on this story from Marketing Web guru, Kim Penstone, click here.
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I want to give ABSA some credit for trying. But that’s all they did ‘try’. What they need to know is that telling me (and I’m the target here me thinks – 20’s to 35’s) you’re my freedom, hope, vision, yada yada is not going to make them that. Central to my life today, tomorrow and together. They’ve got to actually do it. And let’s be honest, right now, no bank is going to fill that space. I’m not even sure I can fill that space.
Why didn’t they come out with ‘My bank is my elbow’? Cos that’s what banks are. They are elbows and bums and mosquitos, and stuff that isn’t often that helpful. Why make out that you’re something you’re not? Tell me who you are, and if we can agree on that, then I will let you in, a little. But when you barge in with vision, freedom, etc, you don’t stand a chance.
Nice spoof
Nuf Sed
So here’s a thought suggested by cherryflava (http://www.cherryflava.com/cherryflava/2005/06/absa_tries_vira.html) that ABSA put out it’s own spoofs to get some coverage. Interesting?
Does anyone know any different? I don’t, and I also can’t find any further images to the ones originally posted by Marketing Web?
This is not without precedent. IKEA, Budweiser and a handful of smaller companies have all spoofed their own adverts.
I think this current ‘My Bank is …’ campaign of Absa’s is one of the worst I’ve seen. When you look at it from a Complexity/Story perspective, all it does is elicit what Dave Snowden calls anti-stories – i.e. stimulating people to share experiences to disprove the statements Absa are making.
My first reaction if someone says to ‘My bank is my passion’ is to ask if that person has no life!
All this campaign does, in my opinion is to highlight the fact that Absa cannot live up to the statements they’re making.