Asimo, the humanoid robot Honda has been developing for 20 years to walk on two legs, strolls into view. Highlighting the marque's technological prowess, the android makes his way through a museum as Garrison Keillor gently intones the Honda maxim of 'technology, making things better'. As Asimo climbs the stairs, Keillor continues, mankind is being taken 'anyway but backwards'. Only this time, the machine is seen tumbling down.
This isn't the way Honda had envisaged its 90-second ad, created by Wieden & Kennedy, being received. Far from the reverential industry plaudits that honoured its 'Cog' execution, this, brands are starting to learn, is the way consumers treat advertising.
While it is clear that a consumer rather than an ad agency has spliced together the original ad with footage from an earlier Japanese press conference, people watching it at home won't care. They'll just see the technicians erecting a screen to hide the fallen Asimo and hear the opening bars of Queen's 'Another one bites the dust', and no doubt will be laughing heartily.
More than 36,00 people have viewed the ad with some leaving brand-damaging rants such as the posting from YouTube visitor Neogeon: 'Stupid Honda and their lies of reliability.'
While some marketers hold yet another meeting to decide whether or not to encourage users to adapt ads for them under carefully monitored conditions, (see `User-generated ads kick off at Superbowl'), thousands of teenagers and techno-savvy spoofers have been busy pillorying them with unauthorised and uncontrollable spoofs on social-networking sites.
'What they are doing to brands, is very dangerous,' says Jonathan Mercer, founder of the consultancy Brand Guardians, whose clients include Toyota. 'It's open season. Anyone with a video camera, broadband and the idea for a piece of communications can take you down. 'Brands that take themselves too seriously, promise too much or lack humour, humanity and humility are setting themselves up for a fall, he warns.
While boardrooms have woken up to the need to monitor what is being said about their companies in blogs and chat rooms, they should be even more wary of a visual medium such as video, which is more impactful and memorable.
'They are only one video away from someone causing a problem with your brand, Mercer says. 'There will be brands that will get seriously holed when their authenticity is challenged. 'Spoofers can sometimes capture the zeitgeist.'
Marcus Mitchell, a strategist at branding consultancy Corporate Edge, says that brands without a well-established core thought, or which are embroiled in controversy, such as Starbucks with its opposition to Ethiopia's plan to trademark speciality coffee, are more vulnerable to a subversion of their brand communications.
'Brand owners have never really 'owned' their brands, they are in the consumer's head. All they can do is manage product, communications etc. and influence consumers' perceptions of a brand. The challenge is creating strong long-term brand properties which consumers engage with. It's basically about building a brand so that your consumers can laugh with you, not at you,' Mitchell says.
John Worlmald, co-founder of automotive consultancy Autopolis, says Honda's positioning invites ridicule.
`I admire Honda and their use of technology. But an ad like this is so elliptical and works so much by indirect suggestion (as opposed to talking directly about the product and its characteristics and performance) that it exposes itself to being spoofed. The problem is that, for volume cars, at least, there are no differentiating features, so ad agencies have to rely on non-product based fantasies, which deserve to be spoofed.'
What is unusual about the Honda spoof is that any belief that great advertising might be less likely to be attacked is seemingly proved false.
Research for a story about Marketing's annual poll of irritating TV ads as voted on by 1000 Britons, uncovered a sub-culture of people so annoyed by what adland is grinding out that they are creating thousands of user-generated spoof ads and posting them on sites such as YouTube.
The motivations behind these spoofs range from using the commercial as inspiration for an arty remix to the extreme of an expression of hatred toward a brand. They regularly pull in tens of thousands of viewers and a few are nearing the 100,000 mark. On YouTube there are more than 3000 postings featuring versions of the Cillit Bang commercial, which came second in Marketing's Irritating Ads list last year. Most consist of techno remixes of the Barry Scott executions.
An ad for Kellogg's Frosties which was voted 10th on the Irritating ads list, has spawned hundreds of spoofs by youths affronted by the over-excited teenager in the ad prancing about like the pied piper and singing 'It's gonna taste great'. One spoof sang to the tune of 'It's gonna taste f**king great' has drawn 76,000 viewers.
So many viewers have left comments repeating the 'urban legend' that the boy who starred in the ad committed suicide after being bullied, that Kellogg has issued a statement that the boy is alive and well in Australia.
There have been cases where companies have taken steps to kill spoof ads. Volkswagen threatened legal action to halt a spoof created by two London creatives, which showed a suicide bomber who dies when his bomb goes off, while his 'small but tough' VW Polo contains the blast and is undamaged.
Last year, Australian agency Downwind Media said lawyers for Tourism Australia asked it to revise the music for its spoof of 'Where the bloody hell are you?', saying it infringed copyrights. The spoof ad, which tourism officials have called 'mean-spirited and humourless'' continues to show Australians being hostile to ethnic people, but with a new soundtrack.
So, what are marketers to do? While you get your head around the problem, why not have a look at a selection of the type of spoofs around now...
Video remixes
Frosties kid - Firestarter
A fantastic re-edit set to Prodigy's 'Firestarter'. That a youth likely crafted this spoof proves ad agencies are overpaid.
Cillit Bang - Hardcore mix
Given the repetition in this remix, it probably scores higher advertising effectiveness than JWT's original for Reckitt Benckiser.
Gentle parody
Shelia's Wheels Parody
A male chauvinistic response warning of women's lack of spatial awareness with the song 'Never let a woman drive'. More than 17,000 people have viewed it.
Brand-hating spoof
Hope sings Frosties
A brilliant contrast to the over-exuberant boy in the original. An Emo lipsynching the inane 'It's gonna taste great' song while looking depressed .
Frostie-Sexual
Yes, snorting, retching and defecating Frosties is vulgar and juvenile. But this crude spoof by several youths is not an unexpected retort to the image of teenagers as portrayed by the folks at Leo Burnett.
Frosties Termination
The excitable Frosties teen becomes the target in a sniper video game.
If you have examples of ad spoofs, send them to bill.britt@haymarket.com, who will add them to our new online feature, Ad Spoof watch.