Pocari Sweat vs. Pacific Life

In the game of advertising, nobody wins when your concept is similar to another commercial.

adgrunts, click continue to watch a tennis match between Pocari Sweat and Pacific Life.

To watch the Pacific Life commercial, click here for the next one in Badland.

Pocari

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Anonymous Adgrunt's picture
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Dabitch's picture

I must say - I prefer this one. A helluvalotsexier. But hot dang what a good catch of a badlander m'friend! some shots are identical!

blabla's picture

creepy - some of the shots are indeed identical... Something tells me this is not a coincidence...

anonymous's picture

This is outrageous. And not a coincedence. I work with the director of the Pocari spot, and we have heard from sources on the Pacific Life set that they were actually A/B switching between Pocari and their spot. This is blatant theivery.

Dabitch's picture

Since the Pocari spot was made before - can't the theivery be proven? it gets iffy around idea-theft sure, but here it's dead obvious where some shots are so identical.....

anonymous's picture

this is unbelievable, but horribly common. Director's ideas are their only currency, and they should be protected.

anonymous's picture

They copied all they could follow
but they couldn't copy my mind
so I left them sweating and stealing
a year and a half behind.

Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936)

Dabitch's picture

Thank you for posting Pocari Sweat vs. Pacific Life. I created the concept and produced the Pocari Sweat commercial. I was brought into the Pacific Life campaign process via their agency Kovel/Fuller in Los Angeles. The agency spent a number of days talking with and meeting with myself and my director, and had us create storyboards as well as
creative ideas to make this spot while not copying the Pocari
commercial.

After going with another director (Justin Klarinbeck at Boxer Films), all of my crew and post houses were utilized to create this campaign.
As I am told that the Pocari commercial was used on-set to recreate the shots, I was also told that it was also used in the telecine bay to match the look.

In short, both agency and director lacked all creativity and integrity to produce this commercial. I am certainly flattered with their gesture, but shocked with their exceptional expression of non creativity.

As the spot aired, the word quickly got back to my client in Tokyo, who at present, is going over all of their legal options regarding International Copyrights. The original Pocari "Tennis" won numerous awards Clio, AICP, New York Art Director, London Film Festival, AICE.
It was featured in numerous trade publications AdWeek, Post, Creativity, Boards, Shots, and a number of FX magazines. With that in mind, it would be almost impossible that the Los Angeles based agency was unaware of the commercial.