Connect with execs from The New York Times, TIME, Dotdash Meredith and many more
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.
More in Marketing
WTF is ‘Google Zero’?
The era of “Google Zero” — industry shorthand for a world where Google keeps users inside its own walls — is here.
The next browser wars are here — and AI wants the ad dollars too
Perplexity and OpenAI are getting ready to take on Google’s Chrome, but will need a solid ad business to keep their browsers ticking along.
Vista Equity Partners’ TripleLift implements ‘significant’ layoffs
The latest round of layoffs is understood to have impacted all departments at the SSP across multiple geographies.