Journal of Consumer Marketing

Emerald Article: Brand parody: a communication strategy to attack a

competitor
Sylvie Jean

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To cite this document: Sylvie Jean, (2011),"Brand parody: a communication strategy to attack a competitor", Journal of Consumer
Marketing, Vol. 28 Iss: 1 pp. 19 - 26
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 Brand parody: a communication strategy to
attack a competitor
Sylvie Jean
EDHEC Business School, INTERACT Research Center, Lille, France

Abstract
Purpose – The use of aggressive media campaigns to parody a competitor is a relatively recent development. The aim of this study is to gauge the
consequences of parody on attitudes towards the brand that is the victim of the parody.
Design/methodology/approach – The data collection was carried out in an experiment design in two steps (before and after brand parody exposure)
in order to measure the effects of a parody exposition on brand-parodied attitude.
Findings – The results show that average level of attitude toward the brand parodied is significantly different after exposure to the advertisement that
parodies it. Thus, the average level of attitude toward the brand parodied is significantly different in accordance with the degree to which those
exposed to parodies are subject to feelings of anti-commercial rebellion.
Practical implications – This study shows that a brand parody communication by playing negative humour with an anti-commercial style represents a
real threat for the brand parodied.
Originality/value – This research measured the effect of parody on attitude toward the brand parodied by its competitor. For this, the original
materials were used (iPod advertising and iPod parody advertising made by its competitor).

Keywords Humour, Consumer behaviour, Advertising, Brand image

Paper type Case study

An executive summary for managers and executive
readers can be found at the end of this article.
Introduction
The use of parody to improve the effectiveness of an
advertising campaign is certainly nothing new. In its
traditional aspect, parody in advertising is one of the
numerous ways to create funny advertising messages. The
principal intention of parody in advertising is to play with
humor in order to favor brand evaluation (positive attitudes),
recall, recognition, and so on. But parody in advertising is
hardly the exclusive domain of those with a product to sell.
Indeed, parody is also favored by counterculture movements.
They use parody to promote their anti-commercial message
against the capitalism system and other problems of the
consumer society as highlighted by authors like Naomi Klein
in her bestseller No Logo. In France, for instance, “Casseurs
de pubs” (affiliated with Canada’s Adbusters) parody brands
like Nike to dissuade consumers from buying such brands.
A new way of parody appeared in 2006 with the brand
SanDisk, a US maker of MP3 players, which launched a
media campaign (internet and buzz marketing) in an attempt
to damage the image of the market leader, Apple’s iPod. The
singularity of the campaign was in SanDisk’s use of the anti-
marketing propaganda also used by counterculture
movements. The SanDisk communication strategy raises
many questions about its effect on the target audience. How
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0736-3761.htm
Journal of Consumer Marketing
28/1 (2011) 19– 26
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 0736-3761]
[DOI 10.1108/07363761111101912]
do consumers evaluate this communication strategy based on
brand parody? Does brand parody have an influence on
attitudes toward the brand parodied? Does the degree to
which people are susceptible to anti-commercial rebellion
have an effect on their reactions to parodies done by
competitor brand?
In an attempt to answer these questions, this study gauges
the effects on attitudes toward brands of a competitor’s anti-
commercial claims. Instead of measuring the effectiveness of a
parody done by a competing brand, we focus on the
consumer’s general attitudes toward the brand parodied.
Our study, then, is organized as follows. Part I deals with the
origins of parody from art to advertising. Part II concerns the
theoretical background and the presentation of hypotheses. In
the third part, the research method is presented. We then
describe the results of the survey and the paper concludes
with a discussion of the results.
Origins of parody: from art to advertising
“Parody” comes from the Greek parôdia, a combination of
para (close to) and ôdiê (singing). The term “parody” was first
used in Antiquity, by the philosopher Aristotle in Poetics. In
his work, Aristotle defined literature by genre, by mode
(dramatic and narrative), and by level (vulgar and superior or
noble). For Aristotle, parody fell in the category of vulgar
narrative. But he never explained exactly what he meant by
parody. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, literature
lost its monopoly on the use of parody; parody took on a
broader meaning. The parody can be not only a comic
transformation of a literary work, a piece of music or a
painting, but also a caricature or satire. At this time, a new
word appeared: “the pastiche”, an imitation of a painting or a
piece of writing (for example: the Proust Pastiches).
In contemporary painting, artists have relied greatly on
parody. The painter Rauschenberg, for example, used parody

19
 Brand parody: a communication strategy to attack a competitor
Sylvie Jean
in his work “the combines” and made numerous references to
founding myths. With “Odalisk” (1955-1958), Rauschenberg
parodied representations of femininity, particularly the
famous Ingres painting La grande Odalisque (1814). Marcel
Duchamp parodied the Mona Lisa by putting a moustache on
the original face. The pop art and hyperrealist movements
attach importance to parody on the principle that it involves a
constant and ironic recycling of cultural and consumer goods.
Parody in counterculture movements
According to the sociologist Serge Moscovici, the “active
minority” points out limited active groups ideologically
coherent and able to take off conflicts and changes in their
society (adapted from Sommier, 2003). In the USA and in
Europe, counterculture movements, anti-commercial
movements in particular, were formed in the 1990s (for
example: Adbusters in Canada or Casseurs de pub in France).
They embody a different, non-violent form of protest directly
inspired by what Martin Luther King called “non-violent
action”. As Sommier (2003, p. 186) writes:
In other words, disguises, hijackings of logos and advertising slogans, and
even an occasional pie in the face are put at the service of anti-capitalist,
internationalist, anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-sexist, feminist, and anti-
homophobic struggles.
This form of rebellion takes on an aesthetic aspect with the
influence of Dadaism and surrealism and is expressed in
“protest art”. The cultural resistance known as “culture
jamming” appeared first in San Francisco in 1984; it was a
creation of the Media Foundation (a not-for-profit, non-
academic, social activist organization). According to
Handelman (1999, p. 399), culture jamming “represents
activity aimed at countering the continuous, recombinant
barrage of capitalist laden messages fed through the mass
media”. The so-called culture jammers are, in a sense, waging
a war against the supposed tyranny of corporations, brands,
and the mass media. As Henthorne et al. (1993), p. 70) notes:
“The most puzzling aspect of the anti-branding movement is
that it takes aim at the most successful and lauded companies,
those that have taken the marketing concept to heart and
industriously applied it”.
In the introduction to their book The Rebel Sell, Heath and
Potter (2004) refer to the Adbusters movement, which is
fighting marketing propaganda. This countercultural
movement has initiated media campaigns such as the so-
called buy-nothing day or parodied brands repeatedly in an
attempt, as the movement’s founders put it, to revolutionize
capitalism. The Heath and Potter point of view is to denounce
this movement because they believe that it is incompatible
with Adbusters’ goals and values. Indeed, the authors take the
example of Adbusters footwear to point an accusing finger at
this movement, which uses marketing tools to deprive brands
such as Nike of their “cool”. Finally, they accuse Adbusters of
simply being a competitor in the footwear market and of
playing by the basic rules of market competition. This analysis
is interesting because it highlights the complexity of consumer
marketing resistance. Inspired by Holt (1997), Roux (2004,
p. 17) mentions two important circumstances: the coexistence
in certain communities of varied and complicated practices
and motivations; and the juxtaposition of opposite positions
under the same banner.
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Volume 28 · Number 1 · 2011 · 19 –26
Thompson et al. (2006) study parodies of Starbucks and
use the generic term doppelgänger brand image. They define it
as:
A family of disparaging images and stories about a brand that are circulated
in popular culture by a loosely organized network of consumers, anti-
branding activists, bloggers, and opinion leaders in the news and
entertainment media (Thompson et al., 2006, p. 50).
These authors study the emotional branding strategy and the
appearance of doppelgänger brand images. In a qualitative
study of Starbucks they show the negative impact of
emotional branding strategies on brand authenticity. The
lack of authenticity furthers marketing resistance and the
development of doppelgänger brand images.
Parody in advertising
The use of parody in advertising can be illustrated by several
examples: Leonardo da Vinci’s well known painting The Last
Supper was parodied by the brand Marithé et François
Girbaud; the TV series Baywatch by the 118 218 TV
advertising campaign (118 218 is a phone number for a
French phone book) and the title of the book The Devil Wears
Prada by print advertisements for the Fiat Panda. By
transforming the famous image of the Beatles’ record sleeve
Abbey Road the Eurostar advertising campaign achieved a
consumer-recognition rate of 49 percent, well above the 34
percent average rate for the transportation industry as a whole
(figures in IPSOS Barometer in 2004). Zinkhan and Johnson
(1994, p. III) were the first to study parody in the field of
advertising research and make the link with popular culture
by pointing out that “advertising reflects popular culture. In
extreme cases, their reflection takes the form of parody”.
They define parody as “an artistic work that broadly mimics
an author’s characteristic style (and holds it up to ridicule)”.
For them, the success of a parody in advertising depends on
the recognition by the audience of the original work that is
being mocked, and the original work must itself be deeply
ingrained in the culture.
In most cases, parody in advertising is linked to a popular
character, a television series, a movie, an event in society, a
book, and so on. In this research, we focus on a competing
brand parody. The use of brand parody by competitors is
either authorized or not. In July 2006, Sony UK authorized
Tango to parody its Bravia television spot. Indeed, it was the
same scenario (different colored balls, representing the pixels
of an LCD screen, hurtle down the streets of San Francisco).
Tango, a maker of fruit juices, simply transformed the balls
into fruits and used the same set and music. This authorized
parody was perhaps linked to Sony’s desire to appear in as
many media as possible during the football world cup and to
demonstrate to competitors that only the best are copied. But,
what has happen when the parody is done by a competitor to
tarnish a leader brand image?
Hypotheses
Zinkhan and Johnson (1994) emphasized the importance of
humor in parody in advertising. But since their proposition to
study the use of parody in advertising, no research has been
done on this topic specifically in the case of a competitor
brand parody. In our research, we are focused on the effect of
humor on attitude toward the brand parodied and the
imitation of culture jamming style of communication.
 Brand parody: a communication strategy to attack a competitor
Sylvie Jean
Attitude toward the brand parodied by a
competitor
The effectiveness of humor in advertising has been widely
researched. Krishnan and Chakravarti (2003, citing
Weinberger et al., 1995), assert that between 10 and 30
percent of all advertisements use humor (or attempt to do so).
The first typology to describe humor was proposed by Raskin
(1985) with following extension (Speck, 1991; Cho, 1995)
and the proposition of a three underlying humor process
composed by: incongruity resolution, arousal safety and
humorous disparagement. The incongruity and
disparagement dimensions are particularly relevant for
studying humor aspects of an advertising brand parody.
Indeed, as Shabbir and Thwaites (2007) mention,
“incongruity has long been recognized as a source of
laughter”. In brand parody, the source of laughter is the
ridiculous transformation of an original advertising support.
Then, brand parody uses disparagement (hostility, derision,
aggression, etc.) to reinforce the humor dimension.
Chung and Zhao (2003) demonstrate the positive effect of
humor on consumer memory and attitudes with the
moderating role of product involvement. In their research,
Cline and Kellaris (2007) examine the strength of the humor,
i.e., “how funny an ad it is” and individual differences in the
need for humor. The results of their experiments show that
people with a high “need for humor” recall advertisements
more easily when they are exposed to more humor. Eisend
(2007) studies the equivocal dimension of the empirical
results in the literature. Indeed, conventional research deals
both with the effectiveness of humor in advertising and with
the moments of the greater effectiveness of humor. As a
consequence, his meta-analysis of the effects of humor in
advertising makes it possible to generalize about these effects.
The results show that humor significantly enhances attitudes
towards advertising and towards brands; it increases
attention, comprehension, cognitive responses, positive
emotion, purchase intentions, recall, and recognition.
However, it reduces credibility and negative emotions.
The purpose of the study is to measure the effect of
exposure to the brand parodied ad on the attitudes towards
the brand parodied. Attitudes are composed of three
dimensions: affect or feeling, cognition or beliefs, and
behavioral intent (Assael, 1998) and are expected to be
stable over time. As mentioned in the review of the literature,
humor exerts a positive influence on attitudes toward
advertising (Chung and Zhao, 2003). In the case of
products that are not intrinsically humorous and when
audience involvement is low, Zhang and Zinkhan (2006)
showed that advertisement humor influences positively
audience attitudes toward the ad and the brand. No study
attempts to measure this effect on attitudes toward brand
parodied. In the context we study, it is clear that the main goal
of the competitor communications strategy is to ridicule the
brand parodied, of course with humor, but also with negative
intentions particularly on attitude toward the brand. Hence
the following hypothesis:
H1. The use of brand parody by a competitor significantly
and negatively affects attitudes towards the brand
parodied.
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Volume 28 · Number 1 · 2011 · 19 –26
The anti-commercial style of a brand parodied by
a competitor
The process of humor (incongruity and disparagement) in the
parody is close to the anti-commercial consumer rebellion
style of communication. In other words, parodies of
competing brands rely not on comparisons but on their
ability to hold up for as much mockery as possible the
advertising campaigns of the brand targeted for parody. There
are two major aspects to a communication strategy founded
on parody:
1 The use of an anti-commercial communication imitation
to tarnish the competitor’s image with a very negative and
ridiculous re-working of its advertising.
2 The use of the political aspects of anti-commercial
movements to denounce the crushing leadership of a
brand.
In our approach, the brand parody used by the competitor is
an imitation of the negative humor traditionally used by anti-
brand activists in their parodies of brands. Except for the
Thompson et al. (2006, p. 50) study of the Starbucks parody
conceived by an anti-commercial movement, the effect of
brand parody on consumer attitudes toward the parodied
brand has never been measured.
Lim and Ki (2007) studied the resistance to ethically
suspicious parody video on YouTube. Indeed, they observed a
proliferation of parody videos corporate campaigns. To
illustrate this, they took the example of the DCI Group who
made the parody for Exxon Mobil (a parody of An
Inconvenient Truth from Al Gore film). More than 60,000
people viewed the video before the Journal’s scoop revealed
the story behind the video. By referring to the inoculation
theory, they showed that subjects who receive a preemptive
inoculation message were better able to detect manipulative
intent in a corporate parody and more resistant to altering
their original attitudes toward the issue.
Measuring the effect on attitudes toward the brand
parodied of these negative advertisements requires gauging
the degree of consumer rebellion. Austin et al. (2005) devise
an anti-commercial consumer rebellion (ACR) scale with four
dimensions: artifice, avoidance, cynicism, and manipulation
(see the Appendix). For this reason, we have taken a survey to
ascertain whether brands can be damaged by parodies done
by competing brands. Hence the following hypotheses:
H2. Attitudes toward parody are significantly and positively
linked to the level of ACR (high vs low).
Methodology
To test these hypotheses, we designed a field experiment and
tested the iPod parody made by its competitor the brand
SanDisk.
The context of iPod parody by SanDisk
Since the iPod was launched, its turnover has increased year
after year, including a spectacular 32 percent between 2005
and 2006. The first attack on the iPod brand came from the
Neistat brothers, who denounced on their blog the limited life
of the iPod battery. In May 2006, the Apple competitor rival
SanDisk inaugurated a US media campaign (print and
internet) protesting the so-called iTatorship. SanDisk’s parody
of iPod advertising attracted media coverage and was
 Brand parody: a communication strategy to attack a competitor
Sylvie Jean
broadcasted on the web site dedicated to this campaign
(www.iDon’t.com). The main claim was: “The time has come
to rise up against the iTatorship [. . .] Now is the time to break
free from restrictive formats and a single source for music”.
This claim is clearly rebellion against the iPod with the same
code as that used by anti-marketers. Moreover, the iPod
owners are compared to “iSheep swarming through our
cities”. The main target of this SanDisk’s media campaign
was young people (aged between 18 and 25) because they are
listening music on their MP3 player and represent the main
audience on internet for advertising parody (for instance on
YouTube web site) and buzz campaign.
Experimental procedure
Our research was implemented in France with the same
advertising support that those used by iPod brand advertising
campaign and the same brand parody made by SanDisk. The
sample frame was made up of 550 students in Bachelor and
Master programs to be consistent with the SanDisk
communication campaign audience. They were invited by
an e-mail to participate to the study. After the two steps of the
study, the response rate was 34 percent (n ¼ 189). The data
collection on the internet was carried out in a two-step
longitudinal process with a two-week space in order to
manage the exposure to brand parody (Table I).
To test H1, attitude toward brand parodied is the
dependent variable. The Maheswaran and Sternthal (1990)
seven-point scale was used to measure attitude toward the
brand (items are: bad/good; outmoded/advanced; inferior/
superior; not as good as competing brands/as good as
competing brands; not useful/useful; a product I will not try/a
product I will try; not a good value/a good value). Attitude
toward the iPod ad and the parody was derived with the aid of
the Henthorne et al. (1993) four-point scale (items are: this
advertisement is definitely not good/definitely good; definitely
not interesting/definitely interesting; definitely not
informative/definitely informative; definitely not appropriate/
definitely appropriate; definitely not easy to understand/
definitely easy to understand; definitely not objective/
definitely objective). To test H2, we used the Austin et al.
(2005) ACR scale.
Results and discussion
The scale used (ACR, attitudes toward the brand and the ad)
demonstrated good internal consistency (alpha ¼ from 0.612
to 0.746). The iPod came out on top (75 percent) when
survey respondents were asked to identify the first MP3 player
Table I Experiment procedure and measures
Exposure in period 1: presentation of the original iPod advertising
Measures in period 1 Attitude toward brand iPod
Attitude toward iPod advertisement
ACR
Attachment to iPod brand
Exposure in time 2: presentation of the iPod advertising parody
Measures in period 2 Attitude toward parody
Attitude toward iPod advertisement
Evaluation of the parody communication
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Journal of Consumer Marketing
Volume 28 · Number 1 · 2011 · 19 –26
that came to mind. The music involvement is high, 4.01 on a
Likert five-point scale. The attachment to the iPod was
measured in period 1 (made operational by Samy and
Lacoeuilhe’s (2005) scale). The average attachment is 2.71
(on a Likert five-point scale). As these results show, the
audience has positive views of the parody:
.
The average level of agreement with the following
assumption: “Parody is an amusing way to
communicate” is 4.04 (on a five-point Likert scale).
This result validates the humor dimension included in the
parody advertising.
.
The average level of attitude toward parody advertising is
2.48 (on a five-point Likert scale). This is confirmed by
the score over ten points, which is 5.51.
To test H1, we used the one-sample t-test with the measure
made at the first and second exposures. The results in Table II
show that the average attitudes toward the brand between
exposures in periods 1 and 2 are significantly different.
Exposure to iPod advertising parodies has a negative influence
on the average attitude toward the brand (iPod).
Finally, those surveyed believe that “Doing parody is open
to criticism” (the average is 3.17 on a five-point Likert scale),
but that “The competitor was within its rights in doing this
parody” with an average of 3.25 (on a five-point Likert scale).
Moreover, for the item “the brand should react to the
competitor’s parody”, the average is 2.71 (on a five-point
Likert scale). In short, parody is authorized; nevertheless,
people do not particularly appreciate the use of parody as part
of a strategy to combat rival products.
To examine the effects of the degree of ACR, we did a
variance analysis. Before this, a K-means cluster analysis
makes it possible to divide the sample by ACR measure (high
and low level). The statistical results in Table III show that
people who are in the higher ACR level in period 2 (5.42 on a
Likert five-point scale after the classification procedure) have
a significantly lower average level of attitude toward the iPod
(p , 0:05). Moreover, the difference between the average
level of attitude toward the iPod brand at period 1 and that at
period 2 is greater for those with a higher ACR (20.52 for
high ACR/2 0.40 for low ACR). The degree of ACR (high
and low) has a significant effect on the average level of
attitude toward the iPod brand in time 2 after exposure to the
parody.
To complete the analysis, we did a K-means cluster analysis
to divide the sample by the average level of attitude toward the
iPod advertising parody (high vs low). The statistical results in
Table IV show that there are significant differences. Indeed,
people who have more positive attitudes toward parody have
significantly higher ACR figures. These people believe that
parody is an amusing means of communication and that the
competitor was well within its rights to do this parody. This
result illustrates the role of anti-commercial rebellion on
attitudes toward parody.
Summary
The use of parody as part of a rival’s aggressive media
campaign is a new development in business practices and is
similar to the actions undertaken by anti-marketing
movements. The first contribution of this paper is to
measure the effects of the exposure to the parody on
attitudes toward the brand parodied. The second contribution
 Brand parody: a communication strategy to attack a competitor Journal of Consumer Marketing
Sylvie Jean Volume 28 · Number 1 · 2011 · 19 –26

Table II Results of the one-sample t-test

95 percent
confidence
interval of the
difference
Std Std error Sign
Dependent measures n Mean deviation mean t (two-tailed) Lower Upper
Attitude toward brand parodied period 1 183 6.0133 0.71643 0.05296 113.543 0.000 5.9088 6.1178
Attitude toward brand parodied period 2 185 5.55429 0.88073 0.06475 85.600 0.000 5.4151 5.6706

Table III ACR results of a one-way ANOVA

Source Mean Std deviation df F Sign.
Attitude toward iPod brand in period 1 6.0158 0.71965 180 2.107 0.148
High ACR 5.9492 0.75591
Low ACR 6.1058 0.66175
Attitude toward iPod brand in period 2 5.5404 0.88248 183 4.397 0.037 *
High ACR 5.4231 0.96381
Low ACR 5.6962 0.73855
Note: * Significant at 0.05

Table IV Attitudes toward parody – results of a one-way ANOVA

Source Mean Std deviation df F Sign.
ACR 3.1421 0.35387 182 3.629 0.058 * *
High attitude toward parody 3.1857 0.35929
Low attitude toward parody 3.0859 0.35387
Parody is amusing 4.0492 0.84045 182 7.253 0.008 *
High attitude toward parody 4.1942 0.86776
Low attitude toward parody 3.8625 0.84045
The competitor was within its rights to do this parody 3.1040 1.0409 183 12.322 0.001 *
High attitude toward parody 3.2935 0.91330
Low attitude toward parody 2.7291 1.04873
Notes: *Significant at 0.01; * *Significant at 0.10

is the identification of the effect of degrees of anti-commercial
consumer rebellion on attitudes toward the brand parodied. It
turns out that using an anti-marketing claim has a significant
negative effect on attitudes towards brands. Moreover, people
are critical of companies that parody the brands of their
competitors but think that is it an amusing way to
communicate. This result illustrates that parody has become
an everyday occurrence and that it may be perceived in much
the same way as humor in advertising is perceived.
Managerial implications
This experiment highlights the need to analyze the use by
competing companies of tactics taken from anti-commercial
movements. Even when they are funny, these tactics can
damage brand reputations in terms of attitude toward the
brand. Analyzing the interaction of brands and
countercultural movements is a means of gauging loss of
legitimacy and authenticity that brand managers would
perhaps do well to take into account.
Limitations and future research
The experimental design supported only one image for a
parody and an iPod advertisement. For a complete
experimental design, it would be necessary to use at least
two parodies and an iPod advertisement. Moreover, the image
must be tested before doing the experiment in order to
neutralize attitude biases. Finally, the sample is limited to
students and would have to be more representative of a wider
population.
Future research may involve more accurate statistical
analyses of the overall effect of ACR. A structural equation
model is more appropriate to test the moderator effect of
ACR and, more broadly, the combined effects of other
variables (age, gender, etc.). Different types of messages
(consumer/company message) and styles of humor
(aggressive/offensive) could complement the experimental
design. To pursue the study of the effect of the SanDisk
campaign on the reputation of the iPod, one could analyse the
reactions of the iPod fan base on blogs and on web sites
devoted to Apple’s MP3 player.

23
 Brand parody: a communication strategy to attack a competitor
Sylvie Jean
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 Brand parody: a communication strategy to attack a competitor Journal of Consumer Marketing
Sylvie Jean Volume 28 · Number 1 · 2011 · 19 –26

Appendix. Anti-commercial consumer rebellion It is a well-established ploy for marketers to use parody as a
scale (factors and items) method of boosting the effectiveness of an advertisement.
According to some reports, up to 30 percent of all
advertisements will have some content that strives to be
Artifice
humorous. The main function of parody is to “play with
.
Many marketing practices are questionable.
humor” in order to improve the notoriety of a specific brand
.
Products claims are often misleading.
and inspire positive attitudes towards it.
.
Marketer’s claims about products are often deceptive.
Some scholars propose the humor construct as being three-
.
Advertising is deceptive.
dimensional. In relation to brand parody, the incongruity and
.
Advertisements are often misleading.
disparagement dimensions are deemed most relevant. The
“ridiculous transformation” of advertising content generates
Avoidance
humor, which is subsequently reinforced by the parody’s use
.
They are brands I will not buy on principle.
of disparagement manifest in such as contempt, hostility or
.
I boycott products made by companies that are unethical.
aggression. Plenty evidence exists that the impact of humor on
. I disapprove of certain brands because they appear
attitudes towards advertising and brands is considerable.
unethical.
Experiments also show that recall of advertisements is strong
.
I avoid purchasing products from companies that do not
when certain people are exposed to humor. Others found
respect consumers.
product involvement to be a factor in determining the effect of
.
I avoid purchasing products from companies that do not
humor on both consumer attitude and memory.
protect the environment.
Parody in advertising is generally associated with well-
known character, television series, movie or book to name just
Cynicism a few possibilities. That parody will only work if target
.
I think that marketers are sneaky. audience is familiar with the original work being parodied is a
.
Marketing has made me cynical. significant point, as certain researchers have pointed out.
.
Marketing has a positive effect on society. Numerous examples can be cited where parody has been
.
Sometimes I question the whole notion of marketing. successfully deployed within advertising. A campaign by
.
I am suspicious of marketing. cross-channel train service Eurostar proved especially effective
when it transformed a record sleeve made famous by
Manipulation legendary popular music group the Beatles. A total of 49
.
Advertisers will say anything to sell their products. percent of consumers recognized the advertising campaign in
.
Marketers want consumers to be more materialistic. an industry where 34 percent is the average rate.
.
Many companies take advantage of consumers. Brands are also parodied by their competitors. On
. Marketing practices are designed to manipulate occasions the action is authorized if the parodied brand
consumers. believes that it might benefit from the exposure. This was in
.
Companies take advantage of consumers. all probability Sony’s reckoning when it sanctioned Tango’s
2006 adaptation of its Bravia TV commercial. Since the
About the author football world cup took place during that summer, the timing
of this parody was obviously a crucial factor.
Sylvie Jean is Professor of Marketing at the EDHEC Business The action will rarely be intended to provide a positive
School. Her research interests include consumer behavior, outcome for the parodied brand though. On the contrary, use
brand image and the development of green products markets. of the technique is generally associated with attempts to vilify
Sylvie Jean can be contacted at: sylvie.jean@edhec.edu rather than extol. And when a parody is politically motivated,
such objectives will become even more paramount.
Executive summary and implications for History reveals certain counterculture movements have
managers and executives emerged since the 1990s spawning agendas that oppose
developments that include capitalism, brands and large
This summary has been provided to allow managers and executives corporations. These forces of resistance are epitomized in
a rapid appreciation of the content of the article. Those with a the US movement known as “culture jammers”, who distort
particular interest in the topic covered may then read the article in brand logos and advertisements in order to get their message
toto to take advantage of the more comprehensive description of the across.
research undertaken and its results to get the full benefit of the Research has shown the negative impact of such “emotional
material present. branding strategies” on the authenticity of the brand under
fire. For instance, scholars have investigated campaigns waged
The origins of parody can be traced back to ancient Greek against the global Starbucks chain and coined the term
philosopher Aristotle, who regarded the style as a “vulgar “doppelganger brand image”. This reflects the counter
narrative”. Its credibility rose in the eighteenth and ninteenth portrayal of a brand that is circulated in popular culture via
centuries when the literary technique began to appear within disparaging images and stories by a “loosely organized
other fields. Around this time, exponents exploited its network” that can include bloggers, opinion leaders, anti-
versatility to create comic transformations, caricatures or branding activists and consumers within its ranks.
works of satire. Parody has since then become widely used When a brand is subject to parody from a competitor it is
within contemporary art forms. Certain movements often in the style of anti-commercial consumer rebellion
appreciate its capacity for generating a “constant and ironic (ACR). The communication will invariably involve a
recycling of cultural and consumer goods”. revamping of the original advertisement that is absurd and

25
 Brand parody: a communication strategy to attack a competitor
Sylvie Jean
extremely negative. Since exposing the dominance of a brand
might be a core objective of the campaign, the parody might
also incorporate the political characteristics of ACR.
In her study, Jean investigates the impact on brands that are
parodied by a competitor. Students in France were invited by
e-mail to participate in the research and a sample of 189 was
obtained. Respondents were exposed to promotional material
for Apple’s iPod, the market leading MP3 player and to a
parody launched by rival brand SanDisk that aimed to
highlight what it termed “iTatorship” of the market by Apple.
As people aged between 18 and 25 were the main target
audience of SanDisk’s campaign, a student sample was
appropriate. Data were collected over a two-week period in
order to ascertain how exposure to the parody impacted on
respondents.
Research findings revealed high awareness of the iPod and
some positive views of the parody. In addition, the study
indicated that:
.
participants felt that competitors had the right to deploy
parody but showed some unease about its use in this
context;
.
exposure to the parody had a significant negative influence
on the average attitude toward the Apple brand; and
.
attitude toward the iPod was distinctly more negative
among those who showed higher levels of ACR at the end
of the two-week period.
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Journal of Consumer Marketing
Volume 28 · Number 1 · 2011 · 19 –26
Both high and low ACR had a marked impact on average
attitude toward the iPod when measured two weeks after
exposure to the SanDisk parody. This confirmed that ACR
influences how parody is perceived.
This study likewise confirms that consumers regard parody
in advertising as a variant of humor even though some
question the ethics of using the technique to attack other
brands. The author points out the potential for parody to
damage a brand’s reputation. She recommends that managers
should scrutinize interactions between brands and
countercultural movements in order to gauge the threat
posed to their brand’s “legitimacy and authenticity”.
Future research could include additional parodies of the
same advertisement and use a sample that is more
representative of the general population. Scholars might also
consider other variables such as gender and age or
communication messages from different sources that could
include consumers and organizations. The style of humor
deployed could be further examined, while analysis of
reactions to the parody of iPod fans on web forums or blogs
is another idea to pursue.
(A précis of the article “Brand parody: a communication strategy
to attack a competitor”. Supplied by Marketing Consultants for
Emerald.)