1- Name & Description
The ad I chose to parody was an ad for a lemon-scented Swiffer. It featured a Swiffer cleaner wiping a wooden floor, and a grove of lemons being created in it’s swerving wake. It also features a little blurb about how great it is, with a really crappy catch phrase. Not the most impressive ad to date.
2- Why I chose to create a spoof ad of this advertisement- Rationale
This ad tries to promote a “fresh”, more “natural” Swiffer with its “lemon scent”. The fact is: nothing about Swiffer is natural. The “lemon scent” this thing leaves off is no more than a collection of chemicals that they add to their ever-expanding vat. Why would you spread all these extra chemicals on your floor just for it to have a vague scent of lemons? You’re supposed to be cleaning! People need to be aware that not all additions are good, especially when it comes to personal hygiene.
3- Desccribe the things you did and the steps you took to create your new ad.
I decided the best way to spoof this is to make those added chemicals deadly, and what better chemical combo than acid! It makes for a good laugh, and also makes you think a little about what’s been put into the products you buy every day. I did this by first removing the lemon path and replacing it with a dirt path. I gave it a shadow to look as though it was below the floor. I touched up the side where the ad had been ripped by smudging, and I cloned the green text area to fill up that cut. Next, I painted some green on a new layer around the edge of the path, smudged it, and changed its opacity to make it look like vapours. I put some on the Swiffer, too. I removed the text and added my own, saying things like “the best way to clean is to remove it all together” and the like. I changed the catch phrase to: “Introducing a “fresh” new twist on dangerous chemicals”. I also added some skeletons I found off of the Internet. Finally, I changed the box design to skull and crossbones. Lemons do have some acid in them, so I think it them one good.
4- If you were to do a similar assignment again, what would you do differently and what would you need to know?
Overall, I think I made a pretty good spoof. It’s funny, it looks good, and it also proves my point. If I had to do it again, I would avoid tampering directly with the background. I would also use the clone tool instead of the smudge tool to make the tailored areas a bit more attractive. Fortunately, I now have the understanding of Photoshop to effectively use these tools. The one thing I would like to learn about, though, is how to better use layers. I’m sure I could have used only one layer for pasted-in images somehow. Besides that, my ad looks pretty good.
References
The dog skeleton was found from a Google search, which lead me to:
http://www.postmortemstudiorental.com/corpses.htm
The skull was found from a Google search, which lead me to:
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Labs/Anatomy_&_Physiology/A&P201/Skeletal/Skull_Bones.htm
The skull & crossbones was found from a Google search, which lead me to:
http://www.biologydaily.com/biology/Poison
