Does it matter if an ad’s not original?
This, I know, is heresy.
But I wonder if it’s such a bad thing if an ad is not entirely original?
The debate that got me thinking about it was the video we featured of Three Drunk Monkeys’ work for Foxtel.
It features the marvellous new over-the-top family festival of EOFYS (end of financial year sale).
You are right, consumers won’t care. But I think we at least have to try and be original. That has to be our mindset. If we don’t it’s kinda like family members marrying. IQ’s start going down the toilet and before you know it, the ads we are making become very middle of an extremely unimaginative road.
A good question.
Just wondering how would a journo feel if a story was ‘inspired’ by one overseas and it went on to win a Wakley or the like? How would you feel if you knew where the story originated from? Would you keep quite or say something?
Advertising, rightly and in many cases wrongly in this country, is obsessed by awards and originality. For those that do it well the financial rewards can be extremely lucrative.
A creatives career path in Australia is defined by winning awards not by doing the best thing for the client, thus the recent proliferation of scam ads and people appointed to big jobs on the back of fake ads.
It should matter to creatives. If a creative keeps ripping off ideas he or she soon gets a name for it, they stop winning awards, the job offers dry up, and that’s the end of their career, at least at the top level.
And if a client sees it happening from their agency, they might wonder why they need to pay for one and just do the ads themselves – or get one of the juniors in the company to trawl through YouTube and ad sites for ideas to adapt.
Hi, I know too much, That’s probably not an identical exmaple – that would be like an agency downloading an ad from another market and rebroadcasting it as theirs.
Copy copying has long been an issue – and long been a tradition for the ABC’s Media watch to expose.
But today for instance, I notice that the Tele is going in hard on politicians’ expenses. I can’t help but wonder if that’s inspired by the Parliamentary expenses crisis in the UK. If so, good on them.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
25 years ago I attached a tambourine to a high hat (the two cymbals that clap together on a drum kit). It made a very satisfying ‘ching ching’ sound.
Recently I saw a plastic device that (you guessed it) attached a tambourine to a high hat.
Did a punter in the Harold Park Hotel pinch my idea and go global?
I guess I’ll never know.
Can someone explain how this was more a rip off rather than IMO a hybrid of two existing FOXTEL ads (by the same agency I believe?).
It appears to me to be a hybrid of the recent family situation, Rafters esque executions and the all singing all dancing iQ TV spot (the EOFYS offer is iQ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ7-eloySpQ
When we talk about originality of ideas we need to separate tactic from execution, many tactical ideas are re invented in advertising, this ad may draw on time tested tactics but the executions are original and if anything copy previous Foxtel ads, it’s called building a campaign I believe.
Tactics it uses have been used and re used many times
– Use of jingles – been done before once or twice
– Use of invented festivals, yep may have been done in fact charities and causes have been doing this for years: red nose day, loud shirt day, walk to work day etc etc. all still effective original executions on a time tested tactic
– Use of acronyms…jeez guys we are marketers we are the most guilty re inventors of acronyms there has ever been, using one in an ad is actually still pretty original
As a Copyschool lecturer recently told us, “we never copy, we just play homage a lot!”