LIVE ISSUE/PARODY ADS.(Brief Article)

Parodies of ads can create awareness quickly if done well

It seems to be open season on advertising parodies this month, with Newcastle Brown Ale and the Dyslexia Society weighing in with spoofs of two of the UK's most high-profile recent campaigns.

The two pastiches add to a growing, but rarely remarked on, body of agency work. Ever since the mid-80s, when Carling Black Label scored a bullseye on Levi Strauss' laundrette ad and followed it up with a classic take on Old Spice's surfer spot, it's been clear that a well-judged spoof can put a brand on the public's lips quicker than months of more original ads.

That's certainly been the case with Scottish Courage's relaunch of Newcastle Brown Ale--which used a burly drinker spreadeagled on his back in a spoof of Yves Saint Laurent's banned Sophie Dahl ad. The poster has racked up its fair share of column inches in the past couple of weeks, as has the Dyslexia Society execution -- which uses Trevor Beattie's fcuk work to highlight the condition.

However, the attitude in adland toward parody commercials remains ambivalent. Creatives seem acutely aware that such work can look like indulgent navel-gazing--which is arguably exactly what it is.

"At Lowe Lintas & Partners we were loath to do it as a general principle," Charles Inge, the agency's former creative director and now a founding partner at Clemmow Hornby Inge, says. "It's quite an easy thing to do, it seems cheap and the danger is that it becomes a joke within advertising."

Inge himself oversaw the Lowe-produced Peperami posters that spoofed the publicity campaign for the Anthony Hopkins movie Hannibal this year. However, he argues that the film's hype had moved its ...