Ford Mocks Cadillac With Lame Parody of ‘Poolside’ Ad

That Neal McDonough ad for Cadillac in which he struts around his pool and home and raps about building the American dream with crazy hard work and “only” two weeks off in August has finally received spoof treatment.

Ford developed “Upside: Anything is Possible” featuring Pashon Murray, founder of Detroit Dirt, who raps about the beauty of turning waste into compost which she sells to people who create urban gardens.

Much like the Cadillac ad, Murray struts around talking about “crazy entrepreneurs trying to make the world better” and then closes with, “It’s pretty simple. You work hard, you believe that anything is possible, and you try to make the world better. You try. As for helping the city grow good, green, healthy vegetables? That’s the upside of giving a damn. N’est-ce pas?”

Yes, it’s an eco message. And while the Cadillac ad, in a way, is too, the Ford ad is the polar opposite. It’s going for green, for liberal thinking, for “it’s not just about money,” for activism and for communal thinking versus individual bravado.

Important as that message is, it falls a bit flat. Perhaps it’s Murray’s less than forthright delivery. Perhaps it’s yet another example of yet another brand trying to ride the coat tails of another. Perhaps it’s that it leverages “green” in a hypocritical effort to sell something that still requires the burning of fossil fuels (where do you think all that electricity comes from?). Or perhaps we’re just sick of writing headlines that read “Brand A Copies Brand B so That It Can Draft Brand A’s Success”