Joe Rogan, the largest podcaster in the world, has mistaken a satirical ad for a real one about the state of COVID-19 in Australia
Rogan shared an ad to his 13 million followers on Instagram, criticizing the Australian government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ad itself for being propaganda on false information.
The ad is from the Australian television show Gruen, and the ad features a man suffering from an allergic reaction, and a woman going in to assist him with an EpiPen; however, he questions the woman helping him, finally asking, “What does Joe Rogan say? Call Joe,” before dying.
Gruen, which was known as The Gruen Transfer, is an Australian satirical show about advertising, and a segment of the show is dedicated to challenging agencies with making a short satirical ad about a specific topic, which are then presented to the panel who votes on who has a stronger ad.
Paper Moose is a creative agency, and the ad they were pitched to create was an ad to win over the vaccine hesitant. The ad was a clean sweep from the panel, with all of them agreeing that it was humorous and impactful.
After realizing the ad was a fake one, Rogan edited the Instagram post saying, “Apparently this is not a real ad. It’s from a satirical show.”
The post was also shared to Facebook, but has not seen any edits made to it.