Friday, January 21, 2011 ...on copycat advertising in Pakistan.
Making an advertisement is no child's play. We like to think it is;
you know, with colors & music & models - like Jerry D. Femina,
an American adman once said "it's the most fun you can have with your
clothes on." But advertising really is a careful blend of science and
art, of strategy & creativity both strongly grounded in each other. A
good advertisement is not only creative in that it is original,
attention-grabbing, memorable & interesting, it is also
strategically designed in that it is relevant to your target audience,
breaks through all the noise & media clutter and successfully
elicits the desired response it was designed to bring out. Now we all
know how it is in Pakistan; a dearth of consumer research means loosely
defined target audiences; a dearth of response measurement tools means
loosely defined advertising objectives. Coupled with high degrees of
uncertainty avoidance which characterize most of our advertisers and the
tendency in our admen to play it safe, our advertisements are at best
artistic in design & execution but uninspiring, ordinary &
worn-out in idea & content.
Now, generally, a creative idea is defined as a new combination of thoughts or a thought that comes from placing 2 previously unrelated concepts together, better still, an idea no one has thought of before. Sometimes it is alright to get inspired by someone else's ideas to develop your own. However, when such inspiration becomes the norm - more like a rule of thumb, as unfortunately is the case in Pakistan, one is forced to question: "what the hell were they thinking??", or better still: "were they thinking at all??"
Pakistani advertising is replete with such examples. Look at
the edible oils industry for instance. The mother cooks delicious food
in Brand X cooking oil, impresses her mother-in-law, gets love from her
husband, cares for her dad-in-law & has a daughter who sneaks her
grandpa a gulab jamun under the table. Which brand or shall I say brands
does this remind you of? The models are different and so is the
background jingle; everything else is pretty much copy pasted.
Or notice how when a particular idea strikes someone,
everyone else follows suit like the patriotic jingle songs series by
every telecom operator a few years ago?
Then there are the truly plagiarized advertisements we
sometimes are unfortunate enough to come across. Remember the Zong print
ad with apples and how the image was a direct ripoff of a book cover?
The only solace we have is the fact that the apples image is a stock
image from a stock image website so its not entirely wrong to have used
the same image for a different brand & category in a different
country.
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| The original (L); The copy (R) |
Then there was the Warid Glow launch campaign - which
unfortunately shared an uncanny similarity with a popular iPod campaign.
But I guess, no one owns the copyrights to using shadow or glow figures
in their advertisement right? So it's perhaps alright given that its a
different brand, category & country?
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| The copy |
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| The original |
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| The original |
Even the Telenor Easypaisa TVC seems to have taken
inspiration from an HTC TV commercial; but I guess it's alright; walking
hands walking feet same thing. As far as the industry is concerned,
alright, related categories but different brands, different countries.
So it's okay.
What about the recent 'Chaska' TV commercial? I feel it is
pretty lame to launch a tea mix commercial based on the same song dance
format as 'Tarang', with its popular song-dance format TV commercials?
And Chaska doesn't even have Saima or Meera in it! Same country same
category, same format - bad production quality and ugly models though.
(Couldn't find it on youtube - sorry!).
Banks aren't too far behind in the race to achieve
mediocrity. Check out SAMBA's print ad for their Sahal business current
account, a few months after Bank Alfalah launched their Kamyab Karobar
business current account campaign. Even the angles are the same (the
only difference being perhaps the health of the models in both ads).
This gets a little annoying don't you think?
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| The original |
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| The copy |
I also seem to have a problem with the fact that Ufone's Uth
Package coincided in its launch time with Omore's Uth ice-cream (the
coincidence being that both decided to spell 'Youth' as 'Uth' at almost
the same time!). But people tell me it's alright and that I shouldn't be
so... nit-picky.
The most recent controversy however, is the Mobilink Jazba
logo design. Rumors have it that the design has been inspired from a
logo design tutorial on a design website called www.abduzeedo.com. You
can access the actual design tutorial HERE.
(Update (23/1/11) : The logo design used as a sample in the tutorial belongs to a Brazilian company called "Zagora" - you can access the company website HERE)
(Update (23/1/11) : The logo design used as a sample in the tutorial belongs to a Brazilian company called "Zagora" - you can access the company website HERE)
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| The copy |
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| The original |
I am sure there are many more examples of copycat advertising in Pakistan. I read somewhere that 80% of Pakistani ads can be considered to fall in the copycat category mostly for repetition of ideas & sometimes for blatant plagiarism. These were just a few of the ads I found worth sharing due to their obviously copied nature. In any case, I know sometimes the line between inspiration & plagiarism is very thin but I also think it is high time for Pakistani advertisers to be a little more careful, a lot more creative and stop overstepping that line.
