How close is too close?
Posted on 11. Apr, 2011 by Jonathan Cherry in Design
Too close for comfort?
We personally believe that there is no such thing as original creative thinking. All creative inspiration is generated by the selective filtering and combinations of existing ideas. But sometimes there may well be cause for the plagiarism alarm bell.
Fred from World Wide Creative sent us this case in point:
A student campaign by Chris Auret (art director) and Alexis Christodoulou (copy writer) in 2009 which won awards looks to have been copied by Ogilvy Paris for WWF.
Chris’s line: WOULD YOU CARE MORE NOW? + body copy
Their line: WOULD YOU CARE MORE IF I WAS A GORILLA, etc.
Ogilvy campaign here: http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2011/would-you-care-more-for-blue-fin-tuna/comment-page-1/#comment-313514
Ogilvy’s response was they didn’t know about Chris’ work, and the similarity was due to the fact that ‘this kind of thing happens’ – insinuating that the copy was just a coincidence.
So in a world so ‘creatively open’ as ours is today – does this kind of thing count anymore – or should we just think of everything as ‘open source’?
[thanks Fred]
2 Responses to “How close is too close?”
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Nic
11. Apr, 2011
I actually think that there might be some business cooperation between Sassi and WWF….
Troll
12. Apr, 2011
If you\’re going to copy a campaign, copy a good one. These aren\’t that great when compared to the truckloads of amazing WWF work done in the past.
Thanks to the good old interweb the world is living in one big happy collective consciousness. We\’re all exposed to the same music, films, politics, arts, design and media so the chances of more than one person putting the same pieces together are pretty high. It\’s happened to me and it sucks but it does happen. I do think this is too close though. The glory days for plagiarists are coming to an end.
If these students are good enough to do one award-winning campaign, they\’re good enough to do another. Just keep doing your thing. It\’s the guys who copy, who should be shitting themselves.