Taking Stock In Your Stock

They say that a picture can speak a thousand words. I wouldn't deny this for a second, nor would I question the power of words, editing, locations and the cadence created within video to construct emotional value. So when I found this video, I laughed to myself. While in the end it does end up being an advertisement for a stock video company, it also says a lot about advertising and our willingness to digest it.

Keep in mind as you watch the following clip that it is not only poking fun at the advertising industry, but the audience's mindless willingness to accept visual content.

This Is a Generic Brand Video is a generic brand video of "This Is a Generic Brand Video," written by Kendra Eash for McSweeney's Internet Tendency. No surprise, it's made entirely with stock footage. All video clips used are from dissolve.com. See and license them here: http://www.dissolve.com/generic The original piece is published on McSweeney's: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/this-is-a-generic-brand-video Narrated by Dallas McClain.

What other examples can you think of? What other ads spoonfeed you visuals with no defined actually brand relation to the product or service? Now that you've become cognizant with this clip, it's way more than you think.