As an avid YouTube watcher I try to stay up to speed on all of the hilarious new videos gone viral. This week I was surprised to see NASCAR driver Jeff Gordan promoting Pepsi Max in disguise running a prank on an unsuspecting car salesman, taking him for the ride of his life. Gordan gets into a 2009 Chevy Camaro with a “can cam” (aka a camera disguised as a Pepsi can), and zooms off educing panic on the car salesman. After taking the car for a few ridiculously fast spins, they return to the lot and the salesman storms off threatening to call the cops, but not before Gordan reveals the truth about who he really is.
A hilarious video, yet to my surprise it just came out that it’s not a true prank! Gordan apparently did not drive the car, and the salesman was an actor. That may be because it was a commercial.
Though it was well disguised as another prank video (hello punk’d), the video is indeed an advertisement for Pepsi Max.
Many are blowing the roof off of the video with detective like images and phone calls to the supposed salesman. Jalopnik goes on a detailed look into the “truth” behind the video. It has been discovered that the producers behind it all come from Gifted Youth, a division of Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die Company. The company even wrote last spring in the New York Times that they “will create videos that are purely advertising, which marketers could run online, on television or in movie theaters. Those videos are more likely to be in the standard commercial lengths of 30 to 60 seconds”. Though some may see this as deception, I can’t help but think of one thing. Oh yea, all press is good press.
No matter if it is a true prank or not (or a true commercial or not), Pepsi Max get’s their product across in a creative and pretty hilarious way. And as of today the video has been viewed over 30 million times! If this isn’t good advertising, I don’t know what is!
NP 4/16
Stay Thirsty My Friends 