Berocca Ad Rips Off OK Go (& Other Notable Copies)

If you live in the UK you may well have seen the new Berocca ad, which shows commuters doing a dance routine on running machines. And anyone who ‘lives’ online will almost certainly realise that the ad is ‘inspired’ by the amazing video for Here It Goes Again by OK Go. Although some might say that it drifts from being inspired by, to pinching the idea.

Personally I think it’s kind of cool that the ad industry is taking inspiration from internet memes. After all, the agency I work for was accused of much the same for the ad they did for TFL (which we did the, very successful thanks for asking, digital marketing for). If you haven’t seen it, you can check it out below – and do pay attention.

However inspiration doesn’t always lead to better ads. In the case of the new ad from Chevy it’s meant to be a ‘spoof’ of the Citroen ads from a few years ago. The only problem is that spoofs are meant to be funny. First have a look at the Citroen ad.

Cool, yeah? Now check out the Chevy one.

Yawn.

One ‘spoof’ ad that I think is generally funny is this one of Honda’s amazing Cog ad, which was done for 118 118 (and yes, the group that I work for did it, although it was before my time.)

And of course, the genius Guinness spoof by the wonderful people at Pot Noodle.

Truly, there’s nothing new under the sun. Or on the web it seems.

3 comments

  1. Looking at the above, all seem to be inspired and pay homage to their originals, *except* the Berocca ad, which looks like a lazy, thoughtless rip-off to me.

    I’m no ad man, but knowing that Bayer’s creatives couldn’t be bothered to even expand on the original idea just turns me off the product altogether.

    Lazy lazy lazy.

  2. Hi Adam.

    I kinda of agree with you that with so much money at their disposal they could have really improved on the original just to set themselves apart from been seen as the copycats that they are. Are you sure they werent a japanese advertising company? No mind it was a poor attempt the least to say.

    However on a more positive note, had I not seen the advert I would never have known that we have a new leisure pasttime. I think its great and the next time it popped up was as a Big Brother Challenge with Mo the greedy ethiopian/somalian and Rex the self obsessed. But it was a brave attempt at giving recognition back to the video I think. I think they did incredibly well.

  3. Believe it or not, the Berocca OK Go ad has just surfaced on Australian TV in 2013. I couldn’t believe they were resurrecting such an old (but sensational) meme, until I discovered how old it is!

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