Time was, you had to tread lightly when making fun of Occupy Wall Street.
Last year, BNY Mellon created a minor P.R. kerfuffle for itself by taking out a humorous ad in the Financial Follies program in which it claimed, “We don’t mean to brag, but we’ve been Occupying Wall Street for 227 years.”
And when late-night comedy shows took their cameras to Zuccotti Park last fall, they often balanced mockery of the protesters with barbs directed at Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Wall Street itself.
Now, it is apparently open season on Occupy.
In recent weeks, DealBook has noticed a commercial for Interactive Brokers that, six months ago, may have been considered too irreverent. The commercial, which has been shown repeatedly on CNBC, adopts the imagery of Zuccotti Park to hawk Interactive Brokers’ trading services, and ends with the tagline: “Join The One Percent.”
Granted, CNBC is a fairly safe audience for lighthearted mockery of a movement that has taken aim at big banks. Still, you have to wonder whether there was any pause in the cutting room while the 30-second spot was being polished for its debut.