College Grads Create Fake Tesla Commercial That Elon Musk Loves 100
cartechboy (2660665) writes "Two University of Southern California grads were looking to start a digital content company so they decided to roll the dice and create a home-made (but incredibly professional looking) television commercial for Tesla — just to see if they could get some attention for it. Well, apparently, mission accomplished. R.J. Collins and James Khabushani took $1,500 and created a 60-second Tesla 'faux-mercial' dubbed 'Modern Spaceship' that is well, pretty good. Elon Musk noticed, tweeted it and has helped the thing go viral."
Re:Lemme posit this... (Score:5, Informative)
Question: why cannot the "professional" commercial makers do this sort of thing?
They do. For example: The Force: Volkswagen Commercial [youtu.be]
Actual link to the ad (Score:5, Informative)
here's the actual youtube link [youtube.com].
Re:Nice viral video (Score:5, Informative)
This is a very common kind of thing done in most college film schools, where students are encouraged to make a commercial about some product that they like and promote it as if they were hired by that company. I had a rather progressive high school where I did that as a high school junior for a television communications class.
Really, it isn't that big of a deal. If the company itself picks up the commercial and runs it as if it was their own, that is where the FTC gets real nasty.
The other thing to worry about is that these guys posted the video on YouTube. Technically Tesla could yank the commercial as a violation of their trademark, and I suppose if it was misleading or doing something to ruin their reputation, they certainly could send in a DMCA request to YouTube and cause the commercial to be pulled. On the other hand, if it is this good, it is free advertising for them and generates buzz with a whole lot of people seeing their products in positive light, so it generally is a win-win situation for companies to support
Re:Lemme posit this... (Score:5, Informative)
What the hell are you talking about.... I just watched a car commercial where a woman jumped on top of a moving train with a car. [youtube.com]