Parodying corporate marketing cliches and generic stock footage is basically a modern day sport (and advertising knobbery regularly comes in for a skewering too). Now stock footage provider Dissolve has combined these two elements into one by adding some of its clips to the words of Kendra Eash and creating the world’s most generic brand video.
Eash’s piece was originally published on McSweeneys. And, as Dissolve says on its website: “The minute we saw Kendra Eash’s brilliant ‘This Is a Generic Brand Video’ on McSweeney’s, we knew it was our moral imperative to make that generic brand video so. No surprise, we had all the footage.”
The company certainly deserves kudos for laughing at the role it plays in facilitating such creative travesties. But it’s also hoping there are some marketers who don’t mind being ignored and are happy with mediocrity, because all the clips from the video are able to be licensed.
