Commercial Parodies! (An Encore Presentation)
In this week's encore broadcast, we take a peek into the risky, yet delicious world of commercial parodies. Some spoof ads are created just for the laughs, while others are sharp critiques of questionable products, overzealous advertising claims and self-congratulatory corporations. We'll look at a magazine that satirized one of the most controversial court cases in history, a company that parodied the competition, then sued another company for parodying their parody, and unpack the Saturday Night Live skits that brought commercial parodies into the mainstream. Commercial parodies didn't just lampoon the ad industry, they influenced it.
This is the Love Theme from the movie… Airplane!
Yes, Airplane! had a love theme, and a lot of other surprising elements that made it the fourth highest grossing movie of 1980.
While Airplane! spoofed the disaster movies of the '70s, like The Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno, it was actually a parody of a very specific film from 1957, called Zero Hour!
Zero Hour! was written by Arthur Hailey, which was an adaptation of a teleplay he wrote for CBC in 1956. While Hailey would go on to write Airport, which started the 1970's disaster genre, it was Zero Hour! that would inspire Airplane!
The writers of Airplane! – Jerry Zucker, David Zucker, and Jim Abrahams – were performing in a sketch comedy troupe they had founded called Kentucky Fried Theatre.
The trio would tape late night television shows to watch the commercials, and would write parodies based on the ads.
One night, while scanning for commercials, they unintentionally taped Zero Hour! Jerry, David and Jim thought the film was a perfectly structured script, and were amused at how overly dramatic it was.
Using Zero Hour! as a template, they wrote a parody of the movie. They lifted the plot, many of the character names, and even the exclamation mark after Zero Hour!
They called it Airplane!
The script was so similar to Zero Hour!, as a matter of fact, the writers took the precaution of buying the re-make rights in order to avoid copyright infringement.
The scriptwriting was hilarious:
But the real magic of Airplane! was in the casting. The writers, who also directed, hired a cast of stone-faced actors known only for dramatic roles. They included Leslie Nielsen, who had portrayed the doomed captain in The Poseidon Adventure:
Robert Stack, who had starred in one of the first ever disaster movies, The High And The Mighty in 1954:
...and Peter Graves, from Mission: Impossible and the disaster movie, SST Death Flight:
Airplane! contains some of the most quoted lines in Hollywood history, which is even more amusing when you realize they mirror the 1957 disaster movie.
Here's a moment from Zero Hour! where a young boy is brought up to meet the pilot in the cockpit, followed by the Airplane! parody:
Then there was Leslie Nielsen, who had only played dramatic roles for the previous 30 years. He delivers maybe the most quoted line from the movie:
When Nielsen was asked how it felt to be cast against type, he said he had been cast against type his whole career until Airplane! In his heart, he was really a comedian.
Airplane! is considered one of the best parodies of all time.
While the writers of Airplane! began spoofing commercials in the mid '70s, the genre predates them by 20 years.
Parody commercials have been the backbone of such cultural institutions as MAD Magazine, the National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live for as long as we can remember.
Some spoof commercials are created just for the laughs, while others are sharp critiques of questionable products, overzealous advertising claims and self-congratulatory corporations.
There is an art to spoofing commercials, and the best ones not only influence popular culture, but the advertising industry as well…
When industry roared back to life after the Second World War, so did Madison Avenue.
Advertising in the '50s was mostly hard-sell and shameless. There was very little wit or nuance, and corporations waxed on about themselves in breathless detail.
That, of course, made advertising ripe for parody.
Enter MAD Magazine.
MAD Magazine was created in 1952. More precisely, MAD was launched as a 10¢ comic book.
MAD did its first ad parody in 1954. It was a take-off on the Rheingold Beer campaign of the time, featuring the fictitious "Potgold" Beer. The copy spoke of the refreshing, never-filling taste of Potgold, then takes a hard right into parody saying, "Taste Schmaste. Potgold gets you drunk. So get potted!"
That parody ad established a style and an attitude MAD would take forward from that point on.
As David Shayne, ex-associate editor for MAD, says in his book titled MADvertising, the magazine's writers didn't have to travel far to get a bead on advertisers.
The address of the MAD offices was… 485 Madison Avenue.
The first rule of a parody ad – according to the MAD editors – is that the original ad has to be well known. Readers have to know what you're spoofing.
The second rule for a successful parody ad is that it must trick viewers at first glance into thinking they're looking at a real ad.
So MAD Magazine was faithful to the original ads in layout, photography and typeface. MAD was so exacting, it would occasionally get letters from angry parents scolding the magazine for accepting tobacco advertising when so many of its readers were children. The editor would write back pointing out the tobacco ads were scathing parodies, and that the joy of reading MAD Magazine was actually reading the magazine.
In the '50s, around the same time MAD transitioned to a magazine format, Crest Toothpaste with Floristan launched it's "Look Mom, no cavities!" campaign. Not long after, MAD readers saw a nearly identical ad with the headline, "Look Mom, no more cavities!"
But a closer examination revealed that the toothpaste was called Crust Gumpaste with Fluidsteel, the Norman Rockwell illustration of the smiling teenager was actually by Norman Rocknroll, and the smiling boy had no teeth. The copy said, "Crust Gumpaste takes the place of teeth by coating them with a hard white enamel finish!"
Even the fine print was parodied. The usual "Guaranteed by Good Housekeeping" seal was replaced with, "Guaranteed by Good Housewrecking."
Spoofing even the tiniest elements was the key to making a parody ad work.
If you can picture a cover from MAD Magazine in your mind, you probably see its gap-toothed mascot, Alfred E. Neuman, smiling on just about every issue since 1956.
But Alfred actually pre-dated MAD. Many early black & white ads from the 19th century actually featured the gap-toothed boy. It was almost as if he was some kind of clip art anybody could use. He appeared in ads for sodas, patent medicines and even mince meat pudding.
The first editor of MAD began incorporating the then unnamed gap-toothed ad boy in various spots all over the comic, and later, the magazine.
A few years later, the magazine realized it had something big on its hands, and placed an ad in the New York Times to find an illustrator to fully render the kid, now formally named Alfred E. Neuman.
An illustrator named Norman Mingo answered the ad, and drew the Alfred we all know today. Mingo was 60 years old when he drew that face in 1956. He had just retired from a career… in advertising.
While MAD Magazine was famous for not accepting any advertising for 40 years, it actually did accept ads in the beginning.
In the comic book days, MAD ran the same ads for novelties - like X-Ray Specs and Sea Monkeys – that you saw in the back of regular comics.
Then, in issue #21, it decided to spoof its own advertisers – which it did – on its cover.
MAD's advertisers were not happy.
But most of the magazine's revenues were from newsstand sales, so founding publisher William M. Gaines didn't really care. That's when he decided to drop advertising all together.
His rationale: MAD could spoof everyone if it was beholden to no one.
For the next four decades, MAD would parody print ads, television commercials and billboards with impunity. It created features like "Half Truths In TV Ads" where it would spoof companies like airlines, who promised to get you there on time, but didn't promise to get your luggage there at the same time.
MAD had another recurring spoof called "Ads We'd Like To See."
So when Geritol was running this ad in 1972:
http://www.historicfilms.com/tapes/13564
MAD did a spoof Geritol commercial of a man hugging a woman, saying, "I love my wife. She's a good mother, she cleans the house, she does the cooking, and the wash and the shopping. She never complains. Yup, I love my wife. Too bad she doesn't look as good as my girlfriend here."
By 1974, MAD circulation peaked at over 2 million readers.
MAD also used ads to spoof current events.
Eventually, MAD's black & white format started to look outdated. The parodies suffered because the ads it was spoofing were all in full colour. But to print a colour magazine meant expensive inks and glossy paper. There were only two choices: Charge more for the magazine, or start accepting advertising.
MAD looked to Saturday Night Live, who did many commercial parodies, yet accepted advertising – and no one ever accused SNL of holding back.
So in March 2001, MAD went colour and began taking on advertisements.
It took a while for readers to adjust to the decision, but MAD proved the advertising didn't hold it back.
Meanwhile, over at the National Lampoon…
The National Lampoon magazine was started by three Harvard graduates in 1969.
Like MAD Magazine, the Lampoon used humour to skewer pop culture. Parody was its best weapon, but it also used cutting edge wit combined with crass humour, along with the occasional nudity thrown in.
Unlike MAD, it depended on advertising revenue, but parodied the advertising industry with abandon.
In one of its most famous spoof ads, it parodied the popular Volkswagen advertising of the '60s.
Using the same layout, the same typeface and even the VW logo, the ad played off an actual commercial that said Volkswagens were so airtight, they could float.
The Lampoon's ad showed a VW floating in a murky lake, with the headline:
The ad was a sharp jab at the infamous 1969 Chappaquiddick incident where Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge, and the car had sunk, drowning passenger Mary Joe Kopechne.
Volkswagen sued the Lampoon over the ad, demanding $33 million for the unauthorized use of its logo.
Lampoon publisher Matty Simmons shrewdly issued a press release stating the magazine was being sued – which prompted the issue to sell out.
In the end, the Lampoon had to issue an editorial statement acknowledging the lawsuit in the next issue, it had to promise to tear out the page in question in all unsold issues (of which there was next to none) and the printing plates had to be destroyed.
Volkswagen eventually withdrew the suit.
And interesting to note that Ted Kennedy never sued.
The Lampoon continued to push the envelope, especially with its outrageous covers. In one issue, it ran a cover with photo of a baby in a blender. The Christian Coalition took exception to the magazine in general, and the cover in particular, and wrote to all the Lampoon's advertisers threatening a boycott.
The companies pulled their advertising.
That was the beginning of the end for the National Lampoon.
When SCTV hit the air in 1976, John Candy and company did dozens of parody commercials. For example, it parodied the weird matchbook advertising of the '70s that promised exciting careers:
Meanwhile over at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York…
The Not Ready For Prime Time Players were busy spoofing ads.
In one of the most famous from season one, Dan Aykroyd parodied the ubiquitous Ronco commercials of the era that seemed to pitch a new kitchen gadget every week. Here, he debuts the "Bass-o-Matic":
Aykroyd returned to the stage in 2015 for SNL40, debuting the new and improved Super Bass-o-Matic.
SNL never missed an opportunity to hoist Madison Avenue on its own petard. Like when a Mercury Marquis commercial said its ride was so smooth, a jeweller could split a valuable diamond in the backseat:
Saturday Night Live parodied that commercial brilliantly. Instead of splitting a diamond to prove how smooth the car was, a rabbi performed a circumcision:
The rabbi was played by the late, great Marv Goldhar. Marv was a Toronto actor, and we did dozens of commercials together. He told me once that Lorne Michaels had asked him to join the SNL cast in 1975, but Marv had turned him down, thinking the show would never last.
Oy Vey.
But my favourite SNL parody commercials were for the First Citiwide Change Bank. Bank advertising has a habit of patting itself on the back for supposedly bending over backwards for their customers. It's a hard claim to swallow. So SNL did a spoof where an earnest banker tells the public that they can make change in any combination customers want. Have a $20 bill? The Change Bank will give you two tens. Or a ten and two fives. Or a ten, a five and 20 quarters.
Banks meet petard.
Eventually, the advertising industry began spoofing commercials.
Which led to an interesting legal case. Back in 1983, Duracell ran a television commercial showing dozens of pink toy bunnies, but only one had a Duracell battery:
Then Energizer did a parody of that bunny commercial, saying Duracell hadn't invited Energizer to the playoff. It featured a pink Energizer bunny pounding a drum:
From that point on, Energizer created a long-running series using the pink bunny it had co-opted from Duracell. The campaign idea for the (now) Energizer bunny was as follows: First there was a commercial for Energizer, then the next commercial would come on for a seemingly unrelated product, and the Energizer bunny would suddenly appear pounding a drum, because its batteries just kept going and going and going.
Energizer would go on to create over 120 "commercial in a commercial" parodies for the bunny.
Then a strange thing happened in 1991.
Coors created a commercial that featured Airplane! star Leslie Nielsen in a bunny suit pounding a drum while parading across a supposed beer commercial from another company:
Energizer sued Coors over that commercial, saying the beer ad constituted copyright and trademark infringement.
Follow the math on this: Energizer had parodied the original Duracell commercial, had co-opted the pink bunny from Duracell, then ran a campaign with the bunny invading a long series of parody commercials – and now was claiming the Coors parody was a copyright infringement of their parody.
Eventually, the court sided… with the beer company, saying the Coors ad was a valid parody of Energizer.
The reason:
Leslie Nielsen wasn't a toy.
And he didn't run on batteries…
The interesting thing about parody commercials is how they affected the advertising industry.
My generation of ad writers grew up reading MAD Magazine and National Lampoon, and we were die-hard Saturday Night Live fans since the first show in 1975.
It influenced our take on advertising. We couldn't write commercials where Madge tells you you're soaking in dishwashing liquid. We found that too absurd.
So the advertising my generation created was self-referential. We made fun of cliché advertising slogans, and stereotypical commercial situations. We would parody hard-sell ads, and make fun of overly sentimental ads.
I remember submitting a humorous commercial where a father doesn't recognize his own son because he's been working too much overtime. My creative director didn't like the humour – he said it was too dark for his tastes.
It was generations colliding. He was pre-Saturday Night Live, I was post.
In other words, parody commercials didn't just lampoon the ad industry, they influenced the ad industry.
And for the better, I might add.
That's why parody commercials are not just fun and delicious, they're surely necessary.
And don't call me Shirley…
…when you're under the influence.