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McConaughey in muchparodied MKC commercial
<p><strong>McConaughey in much-parodied MKC commercial.</strong></p>

Spoof My Ride, Please

Lincoln enjoys a ripple effect from the various parodies of its MKC ad with Matthew McConaughey. &nbsp;

LAS VEGAS – YouTube viewers who watched Ellen DeGeneres’s parody of a ’15 Lincoln MKC commercial far outnumber those who viewed the actual commercial on the popular social-media website.

It prompts an auto analyst to wonder if Lincoln’s ad agency planned the spoof as part of the campaign, giving the all-new MKC’s launch a bigger boost than it would have received from traditional marketing.

The so-called “official” video scored 1.6 million YouTube views. The ad features actor Matthew McConaughey laid back and behind the wheel of a stopped MKC as he laconically contemplates what to do about a bull standing its ground in the middle of the road.

The DeGeneres spoof digitally puts her in the backseat, saying “I don’t see it,” after McConaughey mutters, “That’s a big bull.” She eventually sees it after eating brownies that supposedly came from McConaughey’s marijuana cookbook. She then giddily offers assorted backseat advice, such as “m-o-o-o-v-e” it.

First aired on her eponymous TV talk show that draws about 3 million viewers per episode, her doctored version of the MKC spot has received nearly 5 million YouTube views.

That’s more than three times as many as the original. It doesn’t include view counts from YouTube users posting her video on their own.

It seems like such added exposure would make an automaker pray for a celebrity sendup of its ad. Or maybe even pay. Lincoln Merrihew, a senior vice president at Millward Brown Digital, suggests that at a panel discussion on “How to Reach the Unreachable” at the 2014 J.D. Power Automotive Marketing Roundtable here.

“She showed her version of the video on her TV show and she never made fun of the vehicle,” he says. “Do you think the ad agency contacted the show and had the parody done by design as part of the ad campaign?”

No panelists could answer that.

A Lincoln spokesman tells WardsAuto he knows of no such undercover viral-video plans. “First, let me say you gotta love a guy named Lincoln,” says Sam Locricchio.

He adds: “No, I did not pay his parents to do that, all culminating with his presence on the panel and our recent exposure.

“Second, Ellen actually was not the first. Conan O’Brien had the first parody. I don’t know if that blows the conspiracy theory.”

Other spoofs of the MKC ad came from “South Park” and “Saturday Night Live,” which did make fun of the vehicle as well as McConaughey’s pseudo-philosophical musings.

His deadpan demeanor comes close to self-parody. “It’s not Matthew reading a bullet point script related to car attributes,” Locricchio says.

Lincoln likes what Locricchio calls the “rippled” exposure the ad and its ensuing parodies bring. The brand is fighting to regain some of the past glory it enjoyed before European and Asian luxury models became the vehicles of choice for so many premium buyers.

Mercedes-Benz and BMW are the top-selling luxury-vehicle brands in the U.S. Lincoln, once second, now is eighth, with four straight years of declining deliveries, according to WardsAuto data.

“We are pleased with the continued exposure the ad has seen (and) the name recognition, or more importantly, name awareness as, frankly, we continue to build the brand,” Locricchio says.

Today’s auto advertising must clear a high bar, says conference panelist Michelle Morris, vertical manager-auto at Facebook. “It starts with great content and storytelling. There is no reason consumers should be served an irrelevant ad.”  

When he worked for Ford, ads had a sole purpose, says Jon Schulz, chief marketing officer for Specific Media, a firm specializing in new-age marketing.

“It was all about driving leads to dealers so they could sell more cars,” he says.

It still is, really, but playfulness now plays a larger role.

“Look at the Will Ferrell Dodge Durango ads,” Schulz says, referring to the comedian’s Ron Burgundy character. “They let him do what he does. Twenty years ago, an automaker wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t laugh at itself.”

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