Meet the Two Guys Who’ve Made Ridiculing Chevrolet Ads a Wicked Funny Art Form

[Ubiquitous]

For Ali Shahriari and Dave Irwin, advertising is a funny business.

Under the name Zebra Corner, they’ve earned their stripes with a
series of outrageous online parody videos, frequently zinging
Chevrolet’s “Real People” commercials. Their latest work is
approaching 1.6 million YouTube views since it dropped last
Thursday.

It features the hyper-sarcastic Irwin, aka “Mahk,” edited into
actual Chevy ad footage, and doing his best Baaa-ston Mark Wahlberg
tough-guy routine. He poses some pressing philosophical questions,
like “Who is JD Power? I mean, honestly, it sounds like a porn
star’s name” and “Did you guys rent this whole building out just to
show off all the cars you couldn’t sell?”

https://youtu.be/zSBsq6HBBzw

UPDATE: And here’s another new parody, which rolled out March 23.
https://youtu.be/9-M5xg2Uyxw

Both in their early 30s, Shahriari, a videographer for an
engineering firm, and Irwin, a software configuration analyst (and
former Army paratrooper), have been friends since high school and
currently reside in the Tampa Bay area.

“Dave and I were always the funniest guys in the room and knew we
should work together, but it was just a question how and what,”
Shahriari, who directs the parodies, tells AdFreak. “We both tried
the standup route. But ultimately, local standup is an
unappreciated, thankless art that limits your comedy to only a
roomful of people. Standup comedians deserve so much more
appreciation. I can’t respect those men and women enough, but Dave
and I wanted a bigger audience.”

So, where did they get the notion to spoof ads?

“We’ve always made fun of commercials during our weekly Sunday
football games,” Shahriari says. “We kind of did our own version of
Mystery Science Theater, but for commercials instead of B-movies. It
wasn’t until we saw this trend of ‘real people’ commercials that it
clicked. We were watching TV and a DealDash commercial came on. It
was awful. The acting was horrendous, and they weren’t acting like
normal people would act in that situation. So, we asked ourselves:
‘What if a brutally honest jerk was in these commercials?’ Well the
commercial came back on again, and we started making funny comments
to make each other laugh, except this time we wrote it down. Then I
mentioned I’d been messing with a little greenscreen work recently,
and that I could put Dave right into the commercial. That’s how the
magic started.”

https://youtu.be/_C-CRVUaHiY

“My main inspiration for inserting Mahk into these commercials was
actually Billy Crystal,” Shahriari says. “Every year, when Billy
Crystal would host the Academy Awards he would insert himself into
that year’s group of Oscar nominees with greenscreen. I remember one
year he inserted himself into a variety of classic films from
Charlie Chaplin’s Gold Rush to Spartacus to E.T. I thought it was
just the funniest thing.”

Many viewers assume that “Mahk” Irwin pahks his cah in Hahrvard
Yahd. But in reality, “I don’t have a true Boston accent,” he says.
“I know that’s gonna break a lot of hearts. I was born and raised in
St. Pete, so I don’t have much of an accent at all.”

Pissah! Anyhoo, when seeking targets to skewer, “We pick the ads
based on which ones we dislike the most,” says Irwin. “Also, it has
to have several opportunities for jokes.”

That was certainly true for their inspired send-up from a few months
back, in which Irwin’s choice of emojis to describe the Chevy Cruze
takes him out of his shell and straight into the crapper:

https://youtu.be/d03svtYlFm8

Shahriari estimates there have been 5 million total views for that
clip across various platforms (it’s their biggest hit so far), and
nearly 10 million for all of their videos combined. (Wicked pissah!)

Next, Movantik gets a taste of the duo’s reality treatment:

https://youtu.be/cNQ3sxvslhQ

Whoa, in that one, Zebra Corner didn’t hold anything back! “They
were asking for someone to parody it. I mean, come on!” says Irwin.

He and Shahriari have also worked on some real ads, including “Bacon
Cops,” a sizzling effort for Hormel Foods screened a few years back
at an International Bacon Film Festival in New York:

https://youtu.be/7RRii7yqgOY

And a few years back, Shahriari directed a heartfelt, award-winning
documentary for PBS about comedian Brad Williams, who was born with
dwarfism.

So, what’s ahead for Zebra Corner? Perhaps go the Rhett & Link route
and diversify to become bigger YouTube playahs? Or put a retail spin
on their video success, like Whit Hiler?

Not necessarily. Their videos take about a day to film and a week to
edit (on virtually no budget), so for now they plan to stay focused
on parodies. (In fact, they have a new dig at Chevy that’s set to
roll out any day.)

“We’re happy that something we created is making people laugh,
excited that now we can build on this new following and create more
content,” Shahriari says. “We currently don’t make any money off
these videos because Dave and I decided not to monetize our
parodies. Our reasoning being: First off, we don’t want to become
YouTubers, we just want to use YouTube as a platform for our comedy.
Second, what ad do you think will show up before our Chevy parody? A
Chevy ad! Just seems wrong and totally against everything we stand
for.”

The team’s advice for “real” commercial creators?

“All we ask from ad companies, as consumers, is not to insult our
intelligence,” Shahriari says. “Either tell us a story, be creative
or be funny. People are wicked smaht.”

See what he did there? And that dude’s from Florida (by way of
Tehran)!

Oh, and if you’re wondering why they choose the name Zebra Corner,
Shahriari explains, “Dave and I tripped on psychedelic mushrooms and
went to Busch Gardens. That’s as far as I’ll go with that for now.”

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