There's an interesting discussion going on over at ihaveanidea on my inclusion of Becel's "Broken Escalator" spot on the shortlist for best Canadian ad of the year. Watch the spot here.
The debate surrounds the fact that the concept -- lazy people panicking when their escalator breaks down -- was used in a Saturday Night Life skit in 2004. Read the script here.
Tim Piper, the Ogilvy & Mather art director behind this spot and the famous Dove "Evolution" spot, responds that he's never seen the skit. If he or his creative directors had seen it, they wouldn't have allowed the ad to get produced, he writes.
Interestingly, Piper made a short film using this idea in his native Australia years before the Saturday Night Live skit hit the air.
In an earlier blog posting, I wrote about David Letterman rolling small coloured balls down a San Francisco hill years before Sony and Fallon did in their famous ad.
The two controversies raise some interesting questions:
- When is it okay to lift/borrow/copy an idea for an ad?
- If you plagiarize your own idea, is it stealing?
- Why is it okay to borrow best practises in businesses, but never, ever okay to borrow good ideas in advertising?
