WHILE ON THE SUBJECT OF RIP-OFFS
There’s been a lot of fun and games this week over the likeness of the new RAC corporate commercial to the Unwired tvc from Sydney. The comments section on the site has lit up with people pointing the finger. To take the heat off the boys at The Brand here’s an example of how easy these things happen.
It just so happens that this week we received two submissions to our Seen+Noted regular section in Campaign Brief Asia. Both are exactly the same idea, shot in exactly the same way.
And both arrived at our office within days of each other. A dead set rip-off? Of course not.
The two ads were created by the two most creative and awarded networks in Asia and the creatives who came up with the idea on both sides are hugely respected. These guys win dozens of international awards each year. If either had known the existence of the other they would definitely have discarded the idea at birth and moved on with a different execution.
Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore created the Olay ad and Ogilvy & Mather Asia Pacific created the Ponds ad.
Campaign Brief has at least a dozen more examples from the past few months. It happens all the time.
11 Comments
Can I be the first cynical bastard to say they arrived within days because they were trying to get in first?
The exact same idea at the exact same time. Does that really happen ‘all the time’?
Olay gets my vote. Better art direction.
They both ripped off the idea. One of WA’s AWARD School students did it last year.
Point taken Kim, another classic example is a poster that Andy Blood and myself did a few years back at Saatchi’s for the Auckland Theatre Co.( who yes were a ligitimate client of ours at the time). It was for the vagina Monologues and featured a womans mouth sideways on the page. We really thought we’d nailed another Lion but the minute we submitted it, same execution appeared from two other markets-South Africa and London(we actually ended up proving ours appeared first and that the London one was a scam-a phone call to the theatre that was screening the show there revealled that they knew nothing about the poster! subsequently, ours went on to do quite well). When you’ve got creatives thinking about the same things at the same time in different parts of the world these kind of innocent coincidences will happen all the time especially when you are talking about executional techniques as opposed to the actual creative idea.
A.T.
They’ve both missed the boat. Check this out.
http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/racco_cosm%C3%A9ticos_time
Point taken A.T, but, that was for a particular play at a particular time. And to be honest, not that much of a wildly ‘out-there’ idea (given multiple agencies did it testifies to that).
I don’t right now is a particular ‘time’ for anti-aging. Pardon the pun.
I think everyone knows Kim is right. Especially when it comes to his description of the comments being fun and games. I hope the boys at Brand have not taken any posts to heart as I’m sure they’re not vindictive. How could they be? Anyone who’s spent time in our industry will know that coincidences such as these are not rare. I’m sure most readers, like me, would be reading the story thinking, there but for the grace of God…
Surely part of a creative’s job is to make sure they are doing new and original stuff wherever possible? Maybe this was difficult 15-20 years ago but these days you just have to bookmark bestads (tv) adsoftheworld (print) bannerblog (online) and a couple of the the better blogs (I like sandeepmakam.blogspot.com and adverblog.com). Not only are you refining your own craft by immersing yourself in others’, but you are also avoiding the potentially embarrassing deja vu that seems to happen with alarming regularity here in WA. To say we are thousands of miles from anywhere so our consumers won’t know any different is short-sighted and ultimately career-limiting.
8.04, you are dead right.
Some agencies in this town don’t mind a bit of ‘creative reinvention’ but I agree, there’s no excuse when good work is so easily accessible.
Sorry, but they are not coincidences.
Of course a creative’s job is to create new and original work. If they didn’t, then our profession would simply stagnate. Nobody’s arguing with that. The point being made is that coincidences do happen. Sites such as Best Ads (www.bestadsontv.com), may be useful in identifying whether an idea is old, (if you have the time to do an extensive search). But they cannot stop agencies with similar products coming up with the same idea simultaneously. If you work in a larger agency, it happens all the time during internal competitive creative pitches. Separate teams often come up with the same answer to a brief. If it can happen with teams working only meters apart, it can happen when they’re miles apart.
Fair enough Ten O’Seven. But when it becomes common knowledge in the agency, the question becomes “do we proceed and hope that no one finds out, or pull the plug and try to come up with something even better”? I reckon it is the lamentable lack of strategic planners in WA, able to unearth fresh insights about a brand, which leads creatives to retread the same old territory – and produce the similar executions to competitor brands. The simplest answer would be for some of the bigger agencies to take their brightest mid-weight account execs, put them through some APG workshops, give them the briefs to write and see what happens.