There is no such thing as a new idea?

Separated at Birth

 

Pedigree?



  

Birds?



I saw a great commercial recently. It’s for Pedigree Dog Food and was done in Canada by TBWA. Essentially it shows dogs in very slow motion jumping in the air catching kibble. OK so it’s been around for a while but I’m slow. I loved it, though did worry about the level of branding – it could have been for any dog food.

But then I came across a music video called Birds, made by Pleix for a band called Vitalic. It too shows dogs “flying” through the air in super slow motion. It was made in 2006, clearly before the Pedigree ad. It is remarkably similar. It seems Pedigree has a twin.

Assuming the creators of the Pedigree ad had seen the Birds film, my first thought was what a rip off. I felt somehow cheated. It wasn’t as original as I had thought. And indeed it isn’t.

But then I thought some more about it.

First there is a great history of advertising taking ideas from art and repurposing them for commercial gain. John Everett Millais’s painting “Bubbles" was used by Pears Soap way back in the 19th Century. Budweiser’s "Whassup" was based on a short film entitled "True" by Charles Stone III. Even Ridley Scott’s "1984" for Apple owes a lot to his earlier Blade Runner.

So it doesn’t necessarily matter that they have used an existing idea. After all it wasn’t another client’s campaign they were using as inspiration. As many others have said “There is no such thing as a new idea".

The psychologist Brown said in "Social Psychology" in 1965

“So good an idea is never invented. The antecedents of the authors we have discussed have also their antecedents, and in the end, we find, the idea seems always to have existed. What has changed is the precision of its statement and the implications which are developed” p604. (Quoted in The Accidental Statistician.)



What’s more the creative team have taken the idea and given it a new meaning. In the original the dogs were flying to the music, with no particular reason given. In the Pedigree they have chosen to take off because they love the food so much they want to catch it in their mouths.

So overall I don’t feel so bad. A little disappointed maybe, but still a great ad (though my branding concerns are reinforced now I know it was designed for a different purpose originally).

I also hope that they gave credit to the originators – maybe they used them to make the ad. I hope so. Pears, Budweiser and Apple did.

If you know let me know.