• The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, October 29, 2008 11:45 AM

Odds are you've already seen it: The "Whassup!" guys are back, this time in a viral video for Barack Obama. All the original actors have returned for the 2-minute video, but this time things have gotten bad. One is fighting in Iraq, another has lost his money and his health insurance, and another is trapped in a hurricane. So what's up? Change, in the form of Barack Obama. True, true.

But the video is causing a ripple in industry circles, because Budweiser -- which clearly has no interest in backing a presidential candidate -- is powerless to stop it. In a departure from normal industry practice, neither Anheuser Busch nor its ad firm, Omnicom's DDB Chicago, own the Whassup slogan or concept. Instead, the brewer paid Charles Stone III, who created and starred in the ads, roughly $37,000 to license the idea for five years. That deal expired three years ago.

"If you don't own the idea, you don't have any control," says Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York office of Landor Associates. "It's like driving the car from the back seat." The video so far has more than 2 million views on YouTube.

Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »