How to ‘borrow’ an idea.

Advertising is routinely accussed of ripping off ideas from all manner of sources with Youtube a particularly (ab)used source. The internet is so vast and easy to search that actually no such ripping off ever occured – just an unfortunate coincidence (which I’ve been on the end of). Sometimes totally true.

The point is not whats true but what the commentary around your work will be like. If you know your treading a fineline between homage and ripoff or you’ve discovered a similar piece then you have to have a ‘reaction plan’.

In a hypothetical world, it could work like this.

Creatives to Producer -> We’ve found this great video on youtube and the style and look really works well with our script.

Producer now in a dilemma -> These guys aren’t repped by any agencies, even if I did get in touch they’ll tell me to bugger off – Then we are screwed because they know what we are upto. Double bugger.

Everyone -> We are within the law here. So Ok we’ll go it alone.

So your damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

Creative collaboration could be your answer. Approach the original creatives with the idea that you want THEM to work with your creatives. They’ll get paid well, they’ll get the credit they deserve, you all work together with a director in a collaborative way.

The additional benefit is that you can use the influence of the creators to help share your work. If the original creators post it to Youtube and not the client or the agency, then there is a massive audience of people ready to appreciate a new piece by the same creatives. If it’s framed in a way where everyone knows it was a collaboration then you might just have a great piece of work that is warmly received.

The recent Pepsi ‘Refresh Everything’ work highlights the needs for agencies and clients to be aware of negative word of mouth around their work. All the amazing work on the main campaign around corporate social responsibility starts to be unravelled by a highly vocal fanbase and it could have possibily been avoided by embracing collaboration and not shunning it.

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