Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
Joe La Pompe, French blogger and publicist, has spent almost two decades hunting more or less obvious advertising copycats. In his characteristic edition, with a mask on his face, he will share his story about fighting plagiarism with the participants of SEMPL conference.
Media Marketing: Recently, your third book Copy Paste was published where you compiled 572 ad campaigns but gave no judgment if they are plagiarism or just a coincidence; you left the readers to decide it. You follow the same principle on your website where you give the visitors a choice to decide for themselves. In your almost 20 years of uncovering dubious ads, how do people judge them – do they mostly think that they are just a coincidence or a copycat?
Joe La Pompe: If we take a look at the results of the online polls on my blog I would say that people have a tendency to judge that the showcased examples are mainly copycats. But it’s not very significant. My opinion is that “haters” are more active when it comes to give their opinions on the web and my website is a magnet for haters, frustrated creatives and vengeance seekers.
Also, I found that people are more wicked with unknown little agencies and more forgiving with big creative hot shops. They have difficulties in criticizing places where they want to work or big creatives they idolize.
As far as I’m concerned I’m more kind and comprehensive than people would think. I think that 80% of cases shown on my site are bad luck and coincidences. But it doesn’t mean that creatives are not guilty! They are guilty not having run priority searches. They are guilty of amnesia and bad creative culture… and so on.
Media Marketing: Where do you get all these examples of similar creative ideas that you post on your blog? Do you have any help or do you hunt them all by yourself?
Joe La Pompe: When I started this adventure in 1999 I used to do everything on my own. First I was using only my memory. Soon enough, I bought books and magazines. I have a huge collection of advertising annuals at home, more than 300 books, mostly stolen in the agencies I worked for as a copywriter. Nowadays, I use internet to find 99% of all cases, I use blogs, newsletters, google search, social medias, free ad archives and professional databases. But in addition to this, I get help from various alert launchers and anonymous helpers from all over the world.
Media Marketing: Do you personally believe in coincidences? I. e. that the same (or similar) idea can actually be born in two different places on the planet at the same time?
Joe La Pompe: I’m very cautious because this is a highly controversial subject. As I said earlier, and contrary to the idea that one makes of me, I’m a strong believer in coincidences. I try to always have in mind that people are not guilty. Real thieves are not many and there is honest people in advertising in the same proportions than anywhere else. “shit happens” as we say, and in my many years spent in advertising agencies I have witnessed many unfortunate events of similar ideas found by different people. It happened in the same agency when 2 creative teams worked on the same subject. We all work on similar brands, briefs and insights, we all have more or less the same globalised cultural background (thanks to movies, TV series…) and we all work the same way with the same instruments (Apple, Adobe, Gettyimages..), so I’m not surprised that we end up with similar results. What is really surprising to me, is that every agency claims “originality” and “fresh thinking” but very often, they do not give themselves the means to honour this promise. They don’t really care if some idea has been done before or is overused and I think they should. This problem is being permanently swept under the carpet. It’s a real pain in the ass and it affects our image in a really bad way.
Media Marketing: Why is plagiarism in the advertising industry such a sensitive topic? As you know, the egos of creatives are easily hurt if you let them know that ‘their’ idea is not so original as they thought…
Joe La Pompe: It has something to do with egos. Art directors think at themselves as artists (and they are in some sort of way). And the creatives are often huge self-centered megalomaniacs.
Also, it’s always the same excuses they give: “we didn’t knew”, “how could we know?” and I’m very surprised by these comments. Because most of the times it took me about 15 minutes max to find out that their work was not original. They spend weeks on finding creative concepts and they don’t spend more than 10 minutes to check if it’s original!
Media Marketing: In your view, what is the difference between a plagiarism and similar idea? How can an ad agency (or a client) prove that somebody copied their idea?
Joe La Pompe: It depends of the cases. For example when you look at 2 similar TV commercial, if the idea, the storytelling, the situations, the framing and the dialogues are identical… I guess you can say without taking too much risk that it’s a copycat. Considering print ads it’s always more difficult to judge…
By the way, I quite never use the term of plagiarism. If you have a closer look at my site I always say that one is “less original” than the other and I never say it’s a “copycat”. It’s more about similar thinking, twin concepts and funny lookalikes.
Anyway, it’s always very hard to prove. But a few cases went to court and some agencies were sued, especially for copyright issues, unfair competition and commercial free-riding. Courts rule on a case-by-case basis, examining the work done by the author, looking at its originality, the differences and the risk of the public being confused.
Media Marketing: In this era, when everything can be (re)searched on the internet, do you notice an increase or decrease of similar/recycled creative solutions? Back then when creatives only had books, magazines or other publications with ads, it was maybe harder to spot that an idea has already been used…
Joe La Pompe: I would love to say that there is a decrease because my website is well-known now and the Internet is a vastly helpful tool when researching previously existing work, but I notice, on the contrary, that as more advertisements are produced, the greater the chance of ideas being recycled. The field is filled with amnesiacs and the average age is so young in the agencies that very few have a deep knowledge of what has been produced in the past. For Generation Y, the 1980s are the Middle Ages.
What really changed now with internet, blogs and social medias is that any advertising idea is exposed to a lot of critics … and especially about its originality.
Media Marketing: Some people say that it is nothing wrong if you take an existing idea and just make it better (as Steve Jobs was supposedly doing). What is your take on that?
Joe La Pompe: That’s exactly the point of view that John Hegarty (BBH) developed in a Creative Mornings conference I saw in Paris last year. He said something like “Who cares if it was done before, let’s make it better”. And I guess he’s right. But saying “make it better” he says something very important… he says that you have to do something more, inject some added value to the original ideas. You have to make it fresh, you have to transform it in your own personal way… On my website I mostly showcase old ideas that are done over and over and that don’t look any better or fresher than older versions.
Also, many agencies deliberately don’t pay tribute to the ideas they are recycling, they just try to hide the fact it was done before, win awards and fool the juries. That’s what makes me mad sometimes.
Media Marketing: Have you recently come across an ad campaign that was really original and it didn’t remind you of something you’ve already seen? The work of which brands (and their agencies) do you admire, as they are truly innovative?
Joe La Pompe: It’s difficult to answer because I see so many campaigns on a daily basis that my brain is about to explode. I can’t name just one. But believe it or not, I’m more often amazed by creativity than disappointed by the lack of it.
When I started in advertising, great ad sagas had a significant impact on me such as Skittles for its great use of nonsense, Bud-Light for its humor, Volkswagen for its clever discourse, and Apple for its spectacular side and innovation. I know better than anyone how difficult it is to be truly original, because for a creative it’s only the icing on the cake – you’re mainly asked to be on-point, intelligent, and amusing, while also being sure to stick to the brief and think outside the box, to be intelligible but make it popular, to stay within the budget, and to appeal to the client.
Media Marketing: In the age of influencers, paid by advertisers, you keep your independence. How do you, as a blogger, manage to do that?
Joe La Pompe: I’m masked and I remain anonymous. So I’m free to criticize and I’m not attached to any advertising related company. So, how do I survive in such a competitive environment? Do I earn a living out of my blogging work?
I work for several independent international publications on a regular basis: CB News (France), Cominmag (Switzerland), Arabad (Middle East), Pub (Belgium) and Le Grenier aux Nouvelles (Canada), and I published several books. The latest one was released last year: “Copy Paste: How advertising recycles ideas” (Maison Moderne Publishing / Gestalten). I’m also working for Ad Festivals, helping them to ensure the originality of awarded entries…
Media Marketing: You were working for several advertising agencies and now you advise them how to deliver original work. In your experience, how common is for agencies the practice to ‘just surf the web and see if I can find something useful’?
Joe La Pompe: It happens on a daily basis, everywhere. We must never underestimate the intellectual laziness of the younger generations. They’re used to find answers in real-time… and they hate to have a look back.
Recently a French broadcasted TV documentary said that young adults under 30 were named “the cut copy generation” because they were raised among remixes, mash-ups and permanent recycling in all creative fields…
Media Marketing: Why do you think that they are able to sell recycled ideas to the clients—is it because the clients trust their agencies and they are certain that they will get what they paid for?
Joe La Pompe: Yes, you’re right. But also it’s frequent that the agency doesn’t even know that the idea was done before. They think that it’s fresh just because it came out of their own brains. They don’t realize how often we all are victims of unconscious reminiscences. Creative teams are very young, and few of them have a good creative culture of what have been done before… they work in the rush, constantly lack time to think, and time to run priority searches.
And sometimes also because the clients asked them to do so. How many times I’ve heard a client saying “I love our competitor’s new campaign, I want the same!”. Usually it’s the agency’s job to say “No”… but with the crisis and the fear to lose the budget, many agencies are just doing what the client wants, even if it’s a lame remake of another brand idea.
Media Marketing: Do you ever reveal your face at the public events, such as conferences where you speak?
Joe La Pompe: Keeping my face masked (even if it’s not convenient for a conference) is a good way of maintaining my freedom to criticize and it’s very important to me. I won’t be telling you anything new when I say that the advertising world is full of people ready to do everything to get in the limelight, to have themselves photographed, featured in magazines. Speaking for myself, I prefer to stay in the background. What counts is how I go about doing things and the questions that it raises. Also, I can’t deny that the mystery around it is a good way to make people curious about me and what I do.
Media Marketing: What will you show the audience of the SEMPL conference in Portorož, Slovenia? What would you like for the attendees to take away from your presentation?
Joe La Pompe: I’ll tell the people the story of my blog, why I started it and decided to remain anonymous, what is still motivating me to update it everyday, and what questions all of this raises. But most of all I’ll show them some stunning cases of “unfortunate coincidences”. Some copycats so huge and shameless that they won’t believe it’s true! And I want people to feel more concerned by this key issue of originality, and I hope they’ll want to push things forward and change their ways of working after seeing all this.