Quiznos ignit­ed head­lines with its Burn­ing Man par­o­dy video. So why the Quiznos par­o­dy is get­ting so many views, likes, com­ments, and shares?

If you haven’t seen “Burn Tri­als — Out of the Maze and onto the Playa” yet, spend 2 min­utes and 45 sec­onds to watch it now. As the descrip­tion of the lat­est Toasty.TV orig­i­nal par­o­dy reveals, “What hap­pens when you send the char­ac­ters from The Maze Run­ner: The Scorch Tri­als to an over­crowd­ed music fes­ti­val in the desert? You’ll have to wit­ness it for your­self. Things will get toasty on The Playa. Wel­come to the #Burn­Tri­als!”

Now, accord­ing to an arti­cle by Geor­gia Wells in The Wall Street Journal’s Dig­its Blog, “Now the Burn­ing Man orga­ni­za­tion wants Quiznos to remove the images of the burn­ing wood­en man-shaped sculp­ture and hip­pie city, among oth­er items.” In the arti­cle, Burn­ing Man senior advis­er Jim Gra­ham is quot­ed as say­ing, “Peo­ple at our office thought the video was clever and fun­ny, but they used our intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty to sell some­thing.”

He also not­ed that Burn­ing Man is not threat­en­ing to sue Quiznos, con­trary to some media reports. The two orga­ni­za­tions are now in dis­cus­sions. Accord­ing to Wells, “Quiznos didn’t respond to ques­tions about the ker­fuf­fle.”

Since it is entire­ly pos­si­ble that your brand may be par­o­died some­day, this is a ker­fuf­fle that you will want to mon­i­tor close­ly. Here’s some addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion that is worth know­ing.

Measuring Quiznos’ Success

“Burn Tri­als” was uploaded Sept. 8 and already has more than 2.1 mil­lion views. It has received 2,769 Likes and 302 Dis­likes.

If you look at the video sta­tis­tics for “Burn Tri­als,” you’ll see that time watched is 7 years. It’s dri­ven 106 sub­scrip­tions to the Quiznos Toast­er chan­nel, Toasty.TV, on YouTube. And the video has been shared to social media 3,680 times.

It has 469 com­ments. Here are half a dozen of the top com­ments to give you an idea of what view­ers think about the video:

• “This was great. Can’t believe it came from a Cor­po­rate social media account.”
• “This was the most epic com­mer­cial ever.”
• “I hate Burn­ing Man and a sand­wich com­mer­cial just encom­passed all the rea­sons why.”
• “If Burn­ing Man hates ‘com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion’ so much that it’s will­ing to sue Quiznos over it for mak­ing this par­o­dy, why do tick­ets to the fes­ti­val cost $400?”
• “Best par­o­dy ever. ‘You would­n’t last one day out in the scorch.’”
• “I’ve been to Burn­ing Man 8 times and this is one of the best things I’ve seen. It’s trumped only by the episode where Mal­colm in the Mid­dle goes to Burn­ing Man. Check that out if you like this.”

In addi­tion, “Burn Tri­als” has done won­ders for the Quiznos Toast­er chan­nel on YouTube. Accord­ing to Tubu­lar Labs, the Growth Graphs of the Quiznos Toast­er start­ed to rock­et upwards on Sep­tem­ber 9, the day after “Burn Tri­als” was pub­lished.

Why Video Is A Key Element of Quiznos’ Content Strategy

Quiznos has made video con­tent a big part of its strat­e­gy to reach its core audi­ence: men from their teens to their 30s, accord­ing to Tim Kraus, direc­tor of inter­ac­tive and inno­va­tion at Quiznos.

“We want to make sure wher­ev­er our audi­ence is going, that’s where we have to go,” Kraus told Enter­pre­neur. “So if they switch to con­sum­ing video con­tent on their mobile device, or their tablet or their desk­top com­put­er, that’s where we have to be as a brand.”

Toasty.TV has been a large part of Quiznos’ con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy since 2014. Aside from YouTube engage­ment, their efforts appear to be dri­ving peo­ple to search for infor­ma­tion about store loca­tions, espe­cial­ly around the launch of their videos.

“We knew we were tak­ing a risk as a brand, we knew we were shift­ing dol­lars away from TV into dig­i­tal and we’ve been tremen­dous­ly hap­py with the risk that we took,” Chris Ruszkows­ki, Quiznos’ VP of mar­ket­ing, told AdWeek. “The response has been great. Mil­len­ni­als fol­low, like, sub­scribe and share and we want­ed to be part of that con­ver­sa­tion, and doing con­tent like this allows us to be part of that con­ver­sa­tion.”

Quiznos Has A Flare For Parody

At the end of “Burn Tri­als” are a cou­ple of end cards (a.k.a., end slates) that encour­age view­ers to watch more videos.

The first is “The Waze Run­ner | A #ToastyTV Par­o­dy @Quiznos.” Pub­lished Sept. 15, 2014, it has almost 955,000 views. As its descrip­tion explains, “Inspired by the nav­i­ga­tion app that lets you out­smart traf­fic, and the upcom­ing Maze Run­ner movie, THE WAZE RUNNER tells the sto­ry of teenagers try­ing to nav­i­gate a killer maze, with Waze.”

The sec­ond takes view­ers to “STARTOURAGE: The Four­some Awak­ens | Quiznos | Toasty.tv.” Pub­lished April 16, it has more than 1.4 mil­lion views. As its descrip­tion explains, “See what hap­pens when Hollywood’s most famous fake movie star directs a new episode for the galaxy’s most beloved fran­chise of all time. Pre­sent­ing Star­Tourage, a new inter­galac­tic spoof from the toasty minds at Quiznos. May The Farce Be With You. #Star­tourage #ToastyTV #Quiznos.”

You don’t need to be a lawyer to rec­og­nize all three of these videos are par­o­dies.

Although I’m not a lawyer, I’m not a pot­ted plant, either. So, here’s what we know about par­o­dy:

Although a par­o­dy can be con­sid­ered a deriv­a­tive work under Unit­ed States Copy­right Law, it can be pro­tect­ed from claims by the copy­right own­er of the orig­i­nal work under the fair use doc­trine, which is cod­i­fied in Title 17 of the Unit­ed States Code § 107. The Supreme Court of the Unit­ed States stat­ed that par­o­dy “is the use of some ele­ments of a pri­or author’s com­po­si­tion to cre­ate a new one that, at least in part, com­ments on that author’s works”. That com­men­tary func­tion pro­vides some jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for use of the old­er work.

So, it doesn’t hurt for Burn­ing Man to ask Quiznos to remove the images of the burn­ing wood­en man-shaped sculp­ture and hip­pie city, among oth­er items. But, the Quiznos par­o­dy appears to be pro­tect­ed under the fair use doc­trine – par­tic­u­lar­ly because “Burn Tri­als” is a com­men­tary.

As the main char­ac­ter observes, “They lied to us. They said it was an anti-estab­lish­ment soci­ety based on self-expres­sion, but it’s become a place for rich peo­ple to check off their buck­et list.”

That’s why the Quiznos par­o­dy is get­ting so many views, likes, com­ments, and shares. View­ers agree with the com­men­tary.

Now, if your brand faces a sim­i­lar ker­fuf­fle down the road, roll with the punch and let peo­ple know you can take a joke. That will do more to enhance your brand than call­ing in a small army of lawyers.

What do you think of Quiznos’ lat­est par­o­dy video, and its dig­i­tal video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy?