I have not heard the Bud Light commercial in ages, even though they have been running since 1999. You can imagine how excited I was when I heard the familiar canned music, baritone narration and the soft metal backing vocals. I was primed to hear which humble engine of our economy would be celebrated. Would Mr. Bumper Sticker Writer get his day? How about the man who defied conventional wisdom by inventing the foot-long hotdog?

Unfortunately, it was none of the above. Instead of getting acquainted with Mr. Restroom Toilet Paper Refiller or the man who invented the garden gnome, I heard about a local BMW reseller. And I was disappointed. I was disappointed because I was primed to hear the latest installation in a series of radio commercials that I follow as ardently as I follow DVD re-runs of Arrested Development. I was also disappointed because, in a world bubbling with creativity, it is sad to see such a stunning lack of imagination. People usually try to cover up the thing they are stealing, don’t they?

In this spot, there was not even an attempt. The plodding background music was the same. The attempt at sexual innuendo was the same (though far less effective). They even had an over-enthusiastic background singer, though I doubt Survivor’s David Bickler was involved. The only thing that was different was the attempt at ironic pandering, which came off as insulting to the commercial’s target demographic: people who are currently not driving high-priced foreign imports.

Today We Salute You, Mr. Overzealous Fan of a Commercial
Please assume the commercial was produced locally, because it advertised a local car lot and was airing on a local station. And assume one of two things happened. Maybe the agency that produced the ad is new and therefore unaware that a large portion of the listening audience has already heard the spots originally created by Anheuser-Busch. Or, maybe the client loved the Bud Light spots and could not be dissuaded by the account team from copying them outright. Either way and aside from the fact that Budweiser can be a litigious company protecting its intellectual property, advertisers who copy commercials outright risk alienating listeners who crave original thought, thereby driving customers away from the products they are promoting.

But sometimes your creative well is dry, or you are confronted with a client that wants to make his ad look like ‘The Matrix’. Here are some thoughts on the subject:

Creativity is equal parts inspiration and perspiration.
Creating fresh, unique ideas is not easy. That is why copywriters get paid the big bucks. While it is perfectly fine to use an existing ad campaign as a point of reference for tone or style, existing work should never serve as more than a launching point from which you brainstorm something new. That takes work, and should be done by professionals.

Parodies of parodies do not work.
A parody immitates the style of a writer, artist or genre and deliberately exaggerates for comic effect. That is why David Bickler’s background singing is so funny. It exaggerates hard-sell, emotionally manipulative commercials that actually do exist. Just like a double negative, exaggerating an exaggeration cancels out any comedic effect.

The fine line between chaos and creation.
Just because work exists does not mean it should not inspire you. Some of the most interesting works of the past few years have been re-imaginations of existing works. One of the funniest was the online-only Dylan Hears a Who, which re-imagined Dr. Seuss’s cannon of children’s classics as sung by a mid-sixties Bob Dylan. Then there was Danger Mouse’s legally nebulous Grey Album, which mashed The Beatles’ White Album with Jay-Z’s Black Album. Danger Mouse earned a cease-and-desist order for his efforts, which is unfortunate because The Grey Album was not an outright copy. It was a new way of thinking of existing material—and it was really good. Two years later, The Beatles mashed up their own back catalog to create something wholly original with the critically acclaimed Love album.

Got Ideas?
Walking the fine line of what is legally acceptable and what is not is blurry, but blatantly copying an ad campaign will not fly. More directly, copying an ad turns off potential customers. Do we really need another take on the milk-mustachioed Got Milk Campaign? Bud Light’s list of Real Men of Genius ads is already so extensive, that the campaign itself runs the risk of outstaying its welcome.

Of course, there is a good chance that the people responsible for creating the ad could read this. This is not trying to embarrass or beleaguer you as much as trying to push you to do your best work. Someday you might write or produce an ad as groundbreaking as the Bud Light spots. The last thing you would want then is to have someone to copy your work outright.