Unoriginal sin
pharmafile | October 14, 2003 | Feature | Medical Communications |Â Â advertising, creativityÂ
'OK, so its been done before a couple of times. But badly.' It is the meeting from hell. You may even have been in it yourself. The advertising agency has just finished presenting its groundbreaking, pitch-winning campaign, and waits for the adulation that is due.
Instead, the Product Manager announces that not only has he seen the same concept before, but he didnt like it the first time either. The agency launches into a torrent of denial, evasion and recrimination. Why? Because in advertising, which places such a premium on innovative ideas, the greatest sin is to be unoriginal.
Originality is valued so highly that copyright law is vigorously enforced to protect our intellectual property. And the advertising press is full of claims from different agencies contesting ownership of the same idea. Unfortunately, there is no DNA test to establish paternity of their brainchild.
Strangely, this isn't seen as a problem in other creative fields. Fashion and interior designers cheerfully recycle old ideas and found objects – for them, retro style is always chic. The music industry depends on sampling, re-issues and cover versions of old hits. The difference is that these fields have succeeded in giving imitation a post-modern, ironic twist.
But the issue of originality arouses a great deal of passion and in-fighting in ad agencies. (For a fictional but hilarious account of this, read the novel 'E' by Matt Beaumont.) Because duplication of ideas in advertising is rarely conscious, it's worth examining how it originates. Listed below are some possible reasons. It's also a good library of excuses if youre caught with your arse in the photocopier, so to speak.
Reincarnation
The French communications theorist Durant said: "In advertising, the myth of 'inspiration' and the idea reigns supreme. In fact the most original ideas, the boldest campaigns, are rearrangements of rhetorical devices that have existed for many centuries."
In literature, there are said to be only seven basic plots – every novel, play or film is simply a variation on one of these themes. Similarly, in advertising there are a limited number of archetypal scenarios the product demo, the dramatised mode of action, the lifestyle hype, the slice-of-life dialogue (known in soap commercials as 'two tarts in a kitchen'), and so on. Ingenuity lies in repackaging the product in such a way that it appears fresh and new.
Cryptamnesia
We're exposed to many thoughts and ideas in our everyday lives, but some of them burrow so deep into our memory that when we call them to mind we genuinely believe they are ours alone. This phenomenon is known as cryptamnesia, and it may account for 'false memory syndrome', as well as Jeffrey Archers CV. Many people who claim to have lived previous lives (which they recall in great detail, even under hypnosis) are found to have copied and pasted the detail from books, films or plays that they have seen and then forgotten. Agency creatives are often adamant that they came up with an idea, until it's pointed out that someone else put their beach-towel on it first.
Convergent thinking
When trying to cultivate new ideas we plough familiar furrows, so it's no surprise that we sometimes collide with other people working in the same field. If six agencies are given the same brief, some of the responses are bound to cross over. In which case, whose line is it anyway? History confirms that great minds also think alike. The theory of evolution was conceived by Darwin and Wallace at almost the same time; Edison and Swann, working in parallel, both invented the electric light bulb; and Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus pretty much co-synchronously. Speaking of which…
Synchronicity
Simultaneous ideas occur so regularly that the psychologist Jung had a word for it: synchronicity. He also had an explanation for the acausal connection that seems to link different minds – we all tap into the 'collective unconscious'. In other words, our brains are not truly separate; we all time-share the same set of racial memories and experience. Think of it as a cosmic car boot sale where everyone is hunting for the same bargains. And if that sounds far-fetched…
Morphic resonance
Rupert Sheldrake, the maverick (translation: bonkers) biologist, introduced the theory of 'morphic resonance'. According to this, ideas can jump from organism to organism without any communication between them. It explains why a particular behaviour appears concurrently in groups of animals that are widely separated geographically – the lambada, for example. Sheldrake has been pilloried for his theory, but his experiments have yielded some intriguing results. Even now, someone in Buenos Aires (or a parallel universe) is writing the same article as this in Spanish.
Borrowed interest
Creative people have magpie minds and will sedulously borrow from any source (perhaps thats why theyre called copywriters). If an idea has been around for long enough its considered part of our common heritage reproduction of antiques is a respectable business, after all. Some copy lines in particular are so well worn they should have preservation orders. At the time of writing, two high-profile pharmaceutical brands are sharing the same headline, which was old 10 years ago when I last used it. The critic Harold Bloom calls this process 'transformative improvement'. Lawyers call it 'passing off', or another word beginning with p. Unfortunately, the line between legitimate homage and shameless rip-off can be very blurred.
Auto-plagiarism
We are all influenced by the work of others, but we are also influenced by our past selves. When inspiration flags, it's tempting to recycle our own ideas, and we may do so without realising it. Picasso was once challenged to identify one of his paintings when it was placed next to a counterfeit copy. When he got it wrong, he shrugged and said: "I paint many forgeries." In Japan they call this recycling mechanism the Mandala of Creativity: old ideas never die but are transformed into new ideas as they race around the mandala. Although there's no point in re-inventing the wheel, certain unscrupulous agencies are not above fitting re-treads to keep an old campaign on the road. And if a pitch idea doesn't succeed the first time…
Grand larceny
At the far end of the spectrum lies outright theft. No self-respecting agency would stoop to stealing someone elses work (would they?) However, a number of ads for healthcare brands are clearly parallel imports from other business sectors, or have been fenced from famous campaigns featured in advertising journals and issued with a fake ID. Only the guilty know who they are.
Here is a controversial statement, adapted slightly from Durant. "It is not the business of advertising to be original. True originality should be left to avant garde artists and postmodern novelists." Why? Because genuinely original images and ideas are confusing and unsettling – they alienate the casual reader. Consumers are not attracted by the shock of the new: they prefer the comfort of the vaguely familiar. It takes time for them to adjust their mindset. Cubist and Impressionist paintings, for example, caused outrage and incomprehension when they were first exhibited, but now they appear in suburban living rooms, as well as countless press ads.
One of the most original people in British advertising, Trevor Beattie, admits that "the advertising world never sets trends – it only follows them. Its only because we have the power of the media behind us that it looks as though we started them. It happens all the time, especially in typography or in the ads that we borrow from TV or film."
Because advertising has to work more or less immediately, it is more efficient to appropriate and adapt pre-existing ideas, words and images. Fortunately we all carry a similar repertoire of thoughts, feelings and influences inside us, and due to our common upbringing we are loaded with the same cultural software.
In 1996, Michael Bracewell wrote: "Today, most successful ads are based on direct references to movies, pop songs and, increasingly, other adverts. Advertising, in fact, has become the recycling plant of contemporary culture." And increasingly, advertising feeds on itself, becoming more self-referential with every passing year.
This doesn't mean to say that advertising should rely on re-worked formulas and cliches – it must apply a new twist to what is familiar. Sam Goldwyn said "I'm tired of all the old cliches. Give me some new ones." Perhaps advertising is the art of inventing new cliches: concepts that appear novel but are actually recombinant compounds of well-known words and images.
That's why the most effective campaigns are evolutionary, not revolutionary. They seem obvious in retrospect, yet strike us as new on first exposure. If you examine such ads, you can usually trace their origins to a source of inspiration, which may be an image, an expression or an idea from art, literature, or popular culture. Try it yourself and you'll see what I mean.
Of course, there is never an excuse for producing a carbon copy of someone elses idea. And if you are caught in possession of stolen goods, the only course of action is to fess up and disclose your sources.
Since confession is good for the soul, let me admit that the first line in this article isn't original; it came from an old cartoon in Creative Review by Gray Jolliffe. I wonder where he got it from…?
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