Is it ok to steal ideas?

There are currently a couple ad campaigns from two Stockholm agencies that have created exceptional buzz. Execution-wise these two projects are really high-class. There's a problem though: The ideas are clones of other ideas. 

There's a saying: talents imitate, geniuses steal. But how true is this when it comes to creativity? 

In the short run, stealing pays off – it's a genius move. Your agency will win awards and your unknowing client will be happy. But in the long run, the advertising business has to deliver creativity – ideas that have never been seen before. Ideas that have been made no not change anything inside people's heads and are therefore not creative. 

If the advertising business isn't creative and creates it's own ideas I see few reasons for why it should even exist beyond being printing and production factories, since the ability to find funny stuff on YouTube is not enough to get a Cannes Lion, and it's definitely not worth 300 dollars an hour.

As I said. Stealing pays off in the short run so probably it's a matter of how you view creativity and how your agency conduct business in the long term.

"Rolighetsteorin" by DDB Stockholm. Inspired by this?

"Youtube Hits" by King. Inspired by this? 

Comments

[Max]

From an advertising craft perspective it's really really low.
But for most people I guess it's more like buying a fake eames chair - it's cheap and doesn't feel right. What makes me curious is why people doesn't have higher expectations on themselves...

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Max

[Anomaly London]

We wrote a little something about the phenomenon on our blog yesterday.

http://anomalousness.posterous.com/post-endorsement

[Leon]

@Max: good point, and the fake Eames chair analogy is spot on.

@Alfred: nice to hear from you! Interesting article. I'm not too sure about a "royalties" scheme as a solution though. From a purely egoistic perspective, the ones that get hurt the most by idea theft are agencies – simply because I don't think clients should be paying agencies to be middlemen.

[Anton]

If we continue on the Eames analogy, the really really successful advertising agencies are like IKEA and H&M, then?

Schumpeters creative destruction works in 99 cases out of ten by gradually improving ideas and build further upon them. Hence as long as the commercial has effect there is little problem in using international benchmarking and inspiration as tools to be more effective as an agency.

Advertising agencies both need to be craftsmen and artists. Herein lies the problem, you have to be both and not just the one or the other.

Both King and DDB use existing ideas, even further can be found below the anomalouosness posting, but through good execution (making it sometimes better than the original),by introducing them to a new market and finally by linking ideas and execution to their clients and their offer I'd say they've earned their pay.

[Leon]

@Anton:

The comparison with IKEA and HM is interesting. One could however argue that the competitive advantage (in terms of pooling strategic resources) are to "copy" original designers and brands.

Since we are talking theory (neither DDB nor King build their enterprises on stealing ideas), give this thought experiment a few seconds: What would happen if an agency builds its competitive advantage - in other words its external brand and its employees - on being an "efficient idea recycler"?

In the short run we know from DDB and King that it works, but in the long run I see three problems with idea theft as a business model:

1) WHO would want to work at this type of agency? Recruiting talent to an agency that does not have any core competencies in creative thinking will be tough.

2) WHAT client would want to pay premium for ideas that can be found everywhere and be made by anyone? Remember that salaries and rent still has to be paid, and the ad business today isn't exactly a high-margin business.

3) You can't build long-term brand equity on existing (and therefore generic) ideas.