Make Humanity Great Again parodies Heineken’s Worlds Apart to show that bad advertising can draw people together
A new parody video from John St. asks if can bad advertising save the world, poking fun at Heineken’s 'Worlds Apart' social experiment from earlier this year.
Make Humanity Great Again
The Toronto agency’s spoof social experiment brought people from opposite ends of the spectrum to find common ground for #MakeHumanityGreatAgain, because in a world that is becoming more and more divided each day, humanity’s shared hatred of terrible advertising might be just the thing that brings people together.
The latest video in their parody series, called ‘Make Humanity Great Again,’ takes the concept of two opposite people sitting on a couch trying to find common ground, except in this case, it’s not beer that gets people talking to each other, but awful tampon and erectile dysfunction ads.
"We have this big mural on our wall at John St. that says 'people hate advertising,' so the idea for this film kind of came off our wall," said Angus Tucker, co-executive creative director at John St.
In the film, we see different pairs of people – a nun with a goth punker, an Amish man with a VR-wearing guy, a Princess Leia lookalike with a Spock fan, a Trump supporter with a hipster, and a conservative woman with a drag queen. Just like Worlds Apart, they meet in a stark warehouse, sit on a couch, look wary of each other, then start to watch television. When the fake ads about tampons, kitchen knives and erectile dysfunction come on, they realize they have more in common than they thought.
“Nobody’s that happy wearing a tampon,” says the conservative woman in agreement with the drag queen. “Why is he yelling? We’re right here,” says the punk, while the nun chimes in “Amen.” It’s tagged with "Bad Advertising Can Change the World” and closes with the Trump supporter and the hipster holding a gun, just about to kiss.
"No matter who you are or what party you vote for, whether you love guns or hate guns, love dogs or hate dogs – everyone hates the ads where they talk about these weird side effects for 50 seconds,” adds Tucker. “We think even Donald Trump and Angela Merkel would look at each other and go ‘I hate these stupid ads.’ So once they can agree on that, then maybe, who knows, they could agree on climate change or something.”
Previous videos in the series have included 'Catvertising,' which utilizes the popularity of cat videos to boost ROI; 'Buyral,' a fake company that says it can make your video go viral; 'Exfeariential,' which uses fear and kidnapping to promote brands in a new way; and 'Reactvertising,' which promises super-fast ads in reaction to events and trends.
