Folksy male voice over? Check. Scientists looking at beakers in a lab? Check. Farmers in China and blue collar American workers? Check and check. Animals and women? Double check. Words like “innovation” and “honesty,” check.
If this all sounds familiar, that’s because these are all ingredients for a generic brand video, and they’ve all come together in one glorious viral clip by royalty-free stock footage company Dissolve. Inspired by Kendra Eash’s artfully satirical piece “This is a Generic Brand Video,” which originally ran in McSweeney’s, the Dissolve team decided to actually create the generic, cliche-riddled video to illustrate Eash’s copy.
According to Sheldon Popiel, creative director at Dissolve, he and his team contacted both Eash and McSweeney’s to get their permission to create the video.
“We wanted to do this because the reason Dissolve got into this game is to help people tell better stories by providing better footage — and we know stock isn’t always people’s first choice,” said Sheldon.
The video took about a week to make and was produced by Drew Ng-How-Tseung, graphic designer at Dissolve. In the six days since the video has been up on Vimeo its gotten 191,000 plays and 2,125 likes. Maybe this will make brands think twice before they make their next piece of video content.
Watch it for yourself here:
This Is a Generic Brand Video from Dissolve on Vimeo.