And the only way you would get caught for a ‘copy’ was if the original got featured in a ‘Black Book’ all art directors used to venerate as the Bible of creative till a few years ago. I know of Creative Directors who in the mid 90s would go to Cannes every year only to be ‘inspired’. Chances of the ‘copy’ being caught were minimal. And in the old days you could get away with it. A client/creative guy would see a nice ad or a nice design overseas. Especially when you think no one is watching! This has been the constant malaise in advertising (and in other creative businesses too!). And a really good idea is difficult to resist. The answer to that is simple: the temptation to steal is a human weakness. In the case of PVR, the ad is a frame-by-frame copy of VOX … and the addition of clever supers and a creative rounding up at the end through another super cannot disguise the blatant copy. There are many examples of ads looking similar, purely by coincidence … but they are usually from different product categories and you have to really look for the similarities … usually the commonality of a creative idea but most times rendered somewhat differently. Of course, the PVR client has sought to distance the brand from the brewing controversy but no amount of denials can negate the reality: the commercial is unwittingly plagiarized and no excuse can be proffered to the contrary. The PVR film, “Every seat holds a story” which released earlier in the week, even to the untrained eye, seems a frame-by-frame copy of the VOX commercial … no doubt on that at all. Yesterday, the ET Brand Equity ran a lead piece on PVR’s ‘inspired’ brand film comparing its content to a commercial released a couple of years ago by VOX Cinemas in the Middle East.
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