Twin Cities realtor ad spoof goes viral

If you walked by this Minneapolis bus stop a couple months ago, you might not have noticed something amiss -- unless Lynn Morgan's 5 o'clock shadow caught your eye.

The spoof was part of a series by Phil Jones, an artist who found an amusing muse in the advertisements real estate agents place on benches.

"It's really is one of the only professions where you're forced to put your photo on stuff," Jones explained. "I really feel for these people having to put their faces on a billboard, knowing what usually happens to bus stop billboards."

Jones, who works in the advertising industry as an art director, substituted his own image on half a dozen benches around town this fall. He bought wigs and did his best to imitate the wardrobe and lighting used in the original ads. Then he attached his parody using double-sided tape -- a material he chose because it wouldn't damage the original advertisement.

"I'm all for it," said Scott Parkin, one of the agents Jones spoofed. "It's just more notoriety."

An article on BuzzFeed about the project has been viewed almost 280,000 times since it was posted yesterday.

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