CR Blog

What a gallery of shit, apart from the actual OK GO video obviously.

Hope all the so called creatives involved all feel very pleased with themselves spend that fat undeserved fee well.

Pretty sad state of affairs indeed - not even bothering to be subtle about the ripping-off any more!

This cements my opinion of Advertising — RUBBISH!

Perfect examples of the state advertising agencies are in all over the world. Spending high budget on low creativity.
Still, it’s the companies that go along with it because “such well know agency could be wrong, now could it?”

Yes the smuggness is cringeworthy. This form of comedy has been around for a while - Kid Acne, Goldie Lookin Chain etc. Flight of the Conchords have taken it to a new level, but it’s still nothing new. Poor adverts none the less!

I think it is inevitable that adverts will draw their inspiration from main stream, low budget media such as YouTube, and I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. Although I would prefer to see the huge amounts of money which goes into advertising used to make something original, not copied and not similar to what many of us in the know have already seen.

That Berocca ad is a disgrace. D&AD/CR should award them a ‘Rip-Off-of-Shame’ trophy and then kick them. Hard. In their Berocca’s.

But what about the Weezer video that is in the CR Monitor column? Is that a vapid rip-off of YouTube icons, paid to whore themselves to a record label? Or is it a joyous lo-fi celebration of ‘classic’ clips that we all love by a geek-punk-rock band that we might have a soft spot for? If it had been an advert for Coke, I imagine the furore would be quite big.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muP9eH2p2PI

The Coors ‘ad’ remonds me more of these boys.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuV2VYMyAjM
Often imitated. Never duplicated.

The berocca ad is woeful, I’d like to think that it started out as a half decent homage to the original…but after a few month’s research and various client meetings, it’s ended up as a big steaming turd.

But the other two ads can hardly be called rip-offs.

In terms of style, it’s like saying nsync ripped off the backstreet boys, who ripped off new kids on the block, who ripped off some other bunch of over-hyped tits before them. But because there’s a product attached to them, they’re cast aside as rip-offs.

Let’s not kid ourselves, most advertising (and design) is there to communicate, engage and sell to the mainstream, so it’s only natural that this sort of thing occurs. But because we’re in an industry with an over-hyped sense of its own importance, we jump on the bandwagon and crucify it.

Do you honestly think that Joe public is sat at home on the sofa on a Friday night, (most likely scratching his balls) and thinking, ‘my gosh, they ripped off that music video from the internet’? No.

This kind of thing will continue to happen, whether it’s advertising, design or dare I say it, art. But the ones who get away with it are the ones who are better at hiding their sources of inspiration, which of course is the real secret to creativity.

PS. Aliens in an Indiana Jones movie… What the fuck?

With Berocca its not just the client missing out by getting ripped off by the agency, I’ll bet the makers of the original Ok Go! video received no recognition (monetarily or otherwise) from the agency either. Whilst the latter no doubt got much more money than the music video makers ever did! ….unless it was the same director :-O

Granted Joe Public probably doesn’t notice/care, but as members of a creative industry isn’t it our duty to bring something new to the table?

With the Weezer video, I don’t know if it had been a coke ad, I wouldn’t have been too offended as it would clearly be satire & homage, not ripping off. Incidentally I loved their last ad I saw - Grand Theft Auto turned on its head one!

I agree with Ed Wright too there should be a ‘Shameful Rip-off & Appropriation’ Trophy! Maybe D&AD could give them a wooden pencil…

It’s like when the Honey Monster did a crimp.