ICVA Pulls Super Bowl Shuffle Parody Video In The Face Of Heavy Criticism

WRTV is reporting that the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association has pulled a parody video it produced of the Super Bowl Shuffle song featuring downtown hotel workers plugging Indianapolis' major hotels. The take off of the song made famous by the 1985 Chicago Bears' team that confidentally predicted the team's Super Bowl win that year was resoundingly mocked throughout the Indianapolis blogging community.

The Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Association billed the video as a marketing tactic aimed at Chicago meeting planners and business executives to build buzz ahead of the 2012 Super Bowl.

But what officials described as a cheesy video featuring tourism staffers and workers from seven downtown hotels in their own choreographed version of the 1985 Chicago Bears' "Super Bowl Shuffle" quickly garnered hundreds of critical comments and even a petition and a Facebook page asking city officials to pull it down.

As the feedback reached a critical mass online, ICVA removed the video from YouTube just before 8 p.m. Wednesday.

"Thanks for your passion about the city. We acknowledge making a mistake by going public with this and we accept fault. The video has been removed," wrote Jeff Robinson, the organization's creative director.

The YouTube video had nearly 8,000 views before the video was removed, but the dislikes outweighed the likes 3-1, and of the nearly 200 comments, almost all slammed the video as embarrassing and poorly done.

"If this gets too big, I'm not telling people I'm from here anymore," wrote Motsenbopper.

"So when you have to constantly fight against the perception of being a redneck backwater, it's better not to post video evidence," wrote klooper1965.

Some particularly outspoken critics started a Facebook page pleading to "make this abomination of a promotional video go away as soon as possible!"

I have to admit that the video was a really bad parody of the original Super Bowl Shuffle video recorded by the Chicago Bears. I hate to think how much money the ICVA spent on the production of it. The news story doesn't provide that bit of information. I would share the video on here, but it has already been pulled from the Internet. If the ICVA ever decides to do another parody video, it might look take a look at this quite humorous but well done parody law students for George Washington University Law Review produced parodying Cee Lo Green's "F_ _ _ You" song.




Here's the original Super Bowl Shuffle video produced by the 1985 Chicago Bears Team, which really wasn't all that special in retrospect, but it was unique at the time of its making (back when MTV still played music videos):



UPDATE: Ah, you're in luck. Someone uploaded the video to YouTube.