'Whassup' Comes Out for Obama

The well-known catchphrase "Whassup" helped sell countless cases of Budweiser. Can it help sell a presidential candidate?

The characters that starred in the hit Budweiser ad campaign, which debuted in 1999, are back on video again, but this time they aren't peddling beer. Instead, the characters are hawking Barack Obama.

See the new "Whassup" ad for Barack Obama.

Plus, see the original ad, produced for Budweiser.

Created by Charles Stone III, who conceived the original Budweiser ads, the parody video takes on the presidential election, the war in Iraq and the financial crisis, and throws its support behind Sen. Obama. The Web ad has already generated more than two million views on YouTube since it was posted there Friday.

The parody is raising eyebrows in ad circles, partly because Budweiser's maker, Anheuser-Busch, can't do much to stop it. In a departure from normal industry practice, neither Anheuser nor its ad firm, Omnicom Group's DDB Chicago, own the Whassup slogan or concept. Instead, the brewer paid Mr. Stone roughly $37,000 to license the idea for five years. That deal expired three years ago, says Mr. Stone, who appeared with his buddies in several of the Budweiser Whassup ads.

"If you don't own the idea, you don't have any control," says Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York office of Landor Associates, a corporate branding firm owned by WPP Group. "It's like driving the car from the back seat."

In the new video, one of the characters, an American soldier, calls his buddies from Iraq, and the group exchange their familiar "Whassup" greeting. But they quickly descend into complaining about their dire personal problems. Dookie, one of the characters from the original ads, tries unsuccessfully to hang himself after his stock portfolio plummets.

At the end of the video one of the characters asks again: "Whassup?"

"Change. Change, that's whassup" says another character as he watches TV images of Sen. Obama and his wife.

A soldier calls his buddies from Iraq to say 'Whassup!' in a pro-Obama parody of a Budweiser ad campaign.

Advertising lawyers suggest that even if Anheuser owned the Whassup concept it likely would face a tough court battle to shut down the parody, because First Amendment rights would play in favor of the video's creator.

"If First Amendment butts up against copyright law, First Amendment would generally win, particularly when it's done in a political context," says Douglas J. Wood, a lawyer at ReedSmith who specializes in advertising and media law.

Anheuser-Busch declined to comment.

Mr. Stone says that "out of respect" for the brewer, he put a disclaimer at the end that reads: "The views expressed in this short film are solely those of the individual providing them and do not reflect the opinions of Anheuser-Busch." The filmmaker says he doesn't feel he got a raw deal on the Budweiser ads, but he feels he can use the same concept to "make a difference" for a politician he believes in.