How many times have we been victims of the phrase "it's been done before" on our everyday idea seeking brainstorms? I certainly have asked myself that question many times, and my partner has brought it up even more times that I would sometimes care to know about.
I wonder what do you guys think, the spot from Telecom won a Gold Lion and was 2 points away from winning the Grand Prix on 2002, are we to assume that the Pepsi Max commercial will achieve the same on next year's festival?
And more so, does different concepts/communications justify "same style" execution?
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Any thoughts?
Labels: ads, industry, ponder this
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9 comments:
There seems to be a certain class of advertising student or junior creative who gets a huge ego boost out of looking at work and saying "It's been done before."
Here's something we can probably all agree on: theft is wrong. If you steal advertising ideas, that's bad.
But I'm going to say something that might be a bit heretical in the advertising world -- I think it's good to strive for originality, but I don't think originality has any intrinsic value.
An original idea is more likely to stand out against the noise. But I think relevance is far more important. A spot saying that Soap X tastes disgusting would be original -- it probably wouldn't be relevant to the brand or its consumers. It wouldn't sell soap, and advertising that doesn't sell is just noise.
So if yawning is relevant to two brands, then I see no problem with two brands having people yawn in their ads. Frankly apart from the yawning I don't think these spots are all that similar -- they have utterly different tones and completely different selling propositions. I honestly think someone could easily have come up with the Diet Pepsi Max spot without ever having seen the other one.
The other problem is that originality is an ever more elusive goal. The world spends hundreds of billions of dollars on advertising every year. Just about everything has been "done before" if you look hard enough.
Not everyone has time to look through every single award annual to be sure that one idea is not too similar to another one from years past. I think we probably have to resign ourselves to the fact that sometimes the difference between one ad and another is executional and not conceptual.
The focus should be on doing the best work, not on doing the most different.
Mmmmm
Anonymous, I'm going to be anonymous too.
Some of your points are fine, some of those I have my doubts.
But I don't know how old are you, so I don't know how much advertising have you seen in the past, or if you go to Cannes regularly.
I don't think that in five years we are going to accept to see a spot throwing paint from a building but with a different message take away.
Or we are not going to accept to see a spot throwing balls down the street with a different message delivery.
By the way, Juan Cabral is the creative for the Sony ads, you've probably already seen, and coincidentally he was the creative as well for the Telecom spot.
Dear Anonymous,
So I guess your response is as long as the difference is executional and not conceptual, we're ok?
Hmm, in this particular case the execution is very similar, while the concept or the end message is different: one being get rid of sleepiness and the other being communicate. I think that both of them have a lot in common executionally.
I agree with you, depending on how you look at it you can always come to the conclusion that almost everything has been done before.
I guess my invitation to this chat is where do we draw the line and to what standards are we going to judged by as the years pass?
I agree and think that we should focus on doing the best work that makes our brands stand out in order to sell more. Normally, this comes with originality.
Let's be clear -- I'm not in favor of theft.
To anonymous #2 (NOW who's being unoriginal?): there would be three problems if I created a spot in which colored balls bounced down the street. First, it would be theft and it would be Wrong. Second, it may expose the client to legal problems. Third, it's not going to be particularly effective because people have seen it before.
So yeah, people aren't going to rip off "Balls" or "Paint." What I'm talking about are situations in which creatives arrive at similar ideas independently.
Let's say Creative A comes up, on her own, with Idea A for Product A in Nebraska. Another creative thinks that Idea A is slightly similar to Idea B for Product B in Brazil which was in an annual seven years ago. I don't think "it's been done before" is necessarily a sufficient reason not to run with Idea A if it's right for the brand and relevant to the consumer. In fact, if one were to kill Idea A for that reason, I think one would be putting the opinions of one's friends in the business above the consumer.
What I mainly object to are people who make it their mission in life to make tenuous connections between ads and turn those connections into accusations of theft. As an industry, I think we're already inward-looking enough -- "That's Been Done Before" can turn into a petty little game played by people who apparently have nothing better to do.
I know, by the way, that that isn't what's happening here. Francisco wanted to bring up a really important issue that we all struggle with and the Diet Pepsi Max/Telecom example is only an example. I'm just trying to point out the dangers of being too militant about originality for originality's sake.
To Francisco, who said "I guess your response is as long as the difference is executional and not conceptual, we're ok?" -- I guess that is what I said, but it wasn't really what I meant. I think that's an example of the fact that it can be hard to separate concept from execution.
I suspect that broadly speaking we agree -- I don't think originality is a bad thing. In fact, it's usually a good thing -- but it's a means to an end. Maybe instead of "originality" I should say "uniqueness," because I think two people can come up with the same "original" idea independently.
To Anonymous 1
To Anonymous 2
And To Francisco
Think different
Surely you mean "cogitate alternatively" or "ruminate divergently."
And I've heard people accuse the "Think different" campaign of ripping off "Think small." So... case in point.
The best idea comes from Telecom. Because the idea comes from a strong insight of communicating. The Diet Pepsi Ad is a functional execution to get to the benefit of the product. Its good but not as strong.
I agree with with adman
advertising is stupid.
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