plagiarism or honest similarities?

An astute reader called out the Neuf Music ads as plagiarism.

Intrigued, and because nobody can say that The Daily (Ad) Biz doesn’t follow a lead, I looked into this…and came back with artist Christian Marclay and his 1991 “Body Mix” series:

There is no doubt that there are significant similarities between his work and the Neuf Music work, but plagiarism? You’d have a better case with the Sony Bravia ads by Fallon UK than with these…at least in that case the production company knew the artist in question.

Even if Agence V knew about Marclay’s work, does that make it plagiarism?

Taking a post-modernist “nothing is original” stance, everything is based on and inspired by and comes from and has been influenced by something. Directly or indirectly. And sometimes different people independently come up with similar ideas.

Plagiarism, this is not. Being most un-generous, one could call the Neuf Music work unoriginal (until more information comes to light…I will keep digging).

A great catch by the reader though. You win an image of a gold EFFIE for effectiveness as an advertising sleuth.

Well done.

ban drops a stinkton (heights) on america

Today is a busy day at the House of Biz, especially since our server crashed and took all of today’s snazzy work for my CPG client with it.

But, playing like the champion I am, I came up for air only to be confronted by Ban deodorant’s Stinkton Heights – with commentary by both Adrants and AdScam.

Though Adrants gives this site leeway because “[personal hygiene ads] walk this terrific moral and social line that’s bound to result in lots of misunderstandings and wince-worthy ads,” it still makes the Daily (Ad) Biz’ bad advertising list.

And not just because the site failed to re-size to my laptop’s screen size and the load time was excruciating.

Nor because Weiden is able to do great work on Old Spice deodorant (different target, yes, but still a deodorant and you tell me which work you think is stronger):

And not even because Stinkon Heights is awful similar to this Filthington.org idea by Drew Shaman that won a Merit award in the Student One Show awards last year:

Mainly I don’t like it because it is too obvious.

The eye-watering color-scheme, the teeny magazine copy, the faux-Blair Witch expose (still can’t do the thing over the “e”) of Stinkton Heights…as if anyone would want to expose something like stinky people.

I certainly don’t think that it deserves the vitriol that George Parker sends its way, but I do think that too often ho-hum ideas get through agencies and clients on the back of being executed via “New Media/New Technology.” An interactive microsite is a tactic, not an idea. Online videos? Quizzes? Advice columns? MySpace? Also tactics, not one of them an idea.

And I don’t think that Stinkton Heights is a good idea.

carmichael lynch did it better

Just the other day I posted the really cool Carmichael Lynch print ad for Harley-Davidson that shows a person made out of the parts of the bike.

Then today, I see that Y&R, the Agency of Evil, has just produced an ultra-original outdoor ad that shows a skeleton…made out of Craftsman tools.

But hey, it’s 22 stories tall! As adverganza says, it would be cool if it had a chainsaw.

It doesn’t. And it isn’t cool.

In other Y&R news, I heard (from a reader who seems to dislike Y&R as much as I do) that a major client of Y&R’s once received a disc titled “Best Ads of the Year” with a big Y&R logo on it. Of course it was slated, at the beginning and at the end, with the Y&R logo. But on it, there were no Y&R spots. It was a Clio winners reel.

That’s right adfans, the untalented folks at Y&R slapped their logo on the reel and sent it to a client as if a spot of theirs would be on it. Or as if one could mention “Y&R” and “creative awards” in the same sentence without any sarcasm.

Y&R: we energize business (and if we can’t do it ourselves, we’ll just rip off someone else’s idea to get the job done).

Fantastic.

unoriginality watch

I’ve read the postmodernists and I understand the idea that there is nothing original in the world, but some things are too glaringly unoriginal. They must be called out.

Over at i believe in advertising they are showcasing a Yamaha outboard ad from agency 1861 United in Milan that looks suspiciously like an ad for MasterCraft boats from Periscope in Minneapolis (an ad that the folks at Periscope are so proud of, they’ve had hanging in their lobby since it won some awards in 2002):

I know, I know, Milan and Minneapolis aren’t that close. And the Periscope ad is five years old while I assume the Yamaha one is recent. But come on people, some originality wouldn’t hurt (especially in ads for competitive products).