"Don't you ever get tired of pairing up those Badlanders?" some people say. "Don't you know that twin ideas can just happen?" protest the defensive ones.
Sure I know that, I say that, and sure sometimes I'd rather have an ice-lolly than make another Badland pair... But then again there are other times when I just roll my eyes and wonder who was the lazy-ass bastard to fall so deep into demo-love that you can hardly tell the copy apart from the original.
Like this time.
Original: Adidas ad from 180, Amsterdam in 1999 uses the soundtrack from the Fat Boy Slim album so hip at the time, panning shots of activity on slow motion and a super in the middle of each shot that flips around against the movement of the shot. Very cool look, though a tad difficult to explain. Super adgrunts just click the image to see this ad.
Copy - thirty minutes metro-ride away in the drab landscape of Amstelveen someone at BBDO must have had a seriously bad case of demo-love. They took the shots, the supers font-movement and even the soundtrack and did the same thing a year later. Unable to afford the real deal (like real creatives) they skimped on it all, down to the soundtrack which is a very good sound-alike to Fat Boy Slims "Right here, Right now."
In this case I won't say that the twins just happened. I think this was ripped off to the T. It's an educated guess. You may think whatever you like.
I'll just stand here and wag my finger at BBDO Amsterdam while saying "tut-tut, you HACKS."
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On a behavioral-philosophy level I am surprised that people think that there is stuff like "unique ideas". There is too much information our brains digests that the uniqueness of an idea mainly is a good blend of inputs.
On an advertising theoretical level I don't get the "oh no don't steal the idea" - that's somehow the whole idea of advertising is the "reckon-ability" of the things.
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PermalinkThen on a personal-ethics/ creativity level, I can only think of one word; dignity.
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PermalinkIt's not so much the same idea here as it is the same exact execution. In the Adidas one they encourgae people to dare to do it - Nike style if you will. In the DE Coffee one they say and show situations without kitchens where you still can have coffee as long as you have hot water. It's sortof the tv-commercial equivalent of the twin Nazi and Meat posters, as if someone simply put tracing paper on the first commercial and copied it. :)
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