By now you’ve most likely seen (or at least heard of) Nike’s Tiger Woods-Dead Dad spot.

Personally, I detest any and all ads that use dead people out of context.

It may be heresy for a creative to say so, but I’ve never liked Apple’s Think Different stuff.

In fact, I loathe it.

“Hey! Ghandi and Einstein et al were great! So buy our computers!”

Talk about borrowed interest.

I wonder what Ghandi and Einstein et al would say?

We can never know because they were never given a choice in the matter and that’s because they’re DEAD!

Ditto Steve McQueen in the scenes from Bullitt that were lifted for a car ad a few years back.

And so it was that I first came across – probably about six minutes after it was released – Nike’s Dead Dad posted on Facebook by a friend.

“Tut-tut,” I thought, “Another exploit-the-dead-without-their-consent ad.”

Bu then another thought occurred to me, “Man, this spot is ripe for parody.”

Visually a simple lock-off on the hang-dog face of a certain T. Woods, it was clear that any purloined soliloquy could easily be laid over the picture to hilarious effect.

I scrolled a bit further along on Facebook and there it was – the first parody; a Morgan Freeman rant lifted from a movie and plopped onto Tiger’s mug.

Now it seems a lot of people agree with me on the whole exploiting-the-dead thing.

I’ve seen no end of journalists, bloggers and the rest of the great unwashed taking Nike, Tiger and Wieden + Kennedy to task for this little effort.

Last week the press was even claiming that Elin was divorcing Tiger over it.

But I’ve also seen loads of parodies. Loads and loads and loads of them. Even SNL took a kick.

So – Folly or Genius?

If the W+K/Nike saw the ad as an end in itself then it is most definitely Folly, pure and cynical.

But what if the ad was purpose-designed to be vehicle for parody?

Without doubt, in its original form it has people talking – and very often (most often?) in a negative way.

But the parodies solve that.

To make a parody, you pretty much have to take Dead Dad (the source of much of the negative talk) out of the equation whilst still keeping Swoosh-wearing Nike poster boy Tiger front and centre.

What’s more, the parodies also mean audience participation.

Both making parodies and/or seeking them out are not the passive activity that is simply watching the ad on the RCA.

And finally, you’ve now got an extended shelf life for the ad – it will remain in the public consciousness until we’ve run out of ways to spoof it.

If that was the intent – and we’ll never know for sure because W+K/Nike can always invoke the tried-and-true revisionist “we meant it to be that way” defence – then it is no less than Genius.

What do you think?

- Craig Cooper