Advertising wars: Did BBDO copy Ogilvy, or is it just coincidence?

It's clearly not the best of times if you are involved in the organisation of Goafest or in the creative Abby Awards.

The first bit of bad news was the withdrawal of Ogilvy from the Awards, followed by the withdrawal of Creativeland Asia and of their CEO, Raj Kurup, from both the awards and the juries while the judging process was on.

There was worse to follow: the Ford Figo mess, which saw senior executives from Ford and from their advertising agency JWT India resign; the next bit of bad news was the withdrawal of Tata Salt radio spots by Leo Burnett under instructions from the client and, now, they have to grapple with allegations that BBDO had copied work done by Ogilvy Hong Kong for Allied Pickford Hong Kong.

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Here's the BBDO award winning work

[caption id="attachment_694519" align="aligncenter" width="380"] BBDO's award winning work.[/caption]

The Ogilvy Hong Kong work cannot be downloaded (it's in a subscription site), but can be seen here.

Has BBDO copied this work from Ogilvy - or is it a coincidence? That's the question the jury will have to answer - and they will, during the course of today.

While we wait for the jury decision, here are some thoughts.

The BBDO entry should never have been awarded in the first place.

In advertising, there's the old rule: throw the first three ideas into the dustbin - because these ideas come so easily that it is likely that someone, somewhere has thought of the idea earlier.

When zooming on 'we deliver the impossible', (which all courier companies would love to say and own) the operative word, as far as an art director goes, would be 'impossible'.

From the word 'impossible' one of the first leaps, for an art director, would be illustrations in the style of Escher, famous for works that include 'Relativity' and 'Hands'. Whohasn'tseen them?

A little less removed, but by no means a long distance from Escher, is Penrose. He created what is now referred to as 'ThePenrose triangle', which is an 'impossible object'. "ThemathematicianRoger Penroseindependently devised and popularised it in the 1950s, describing it as "impossibility in its purest form". It is featured prominently in the works of artistM. C. Escher, whose earlier depictions of impossible objects partly inspired it," says the wikipedia entry.

Here it is, for all to see:

To me, it is this triangle (and works of geniuses like Escher) which inspired both Ogilvy and BBDO, not work created by each other.

If the visuals are inspired by such work, BBDO and Ogilvy use different - but not startlingly different - lines. The BBDO work says, "If you can make it, you can ship it", alluding to the impossibility. The Ogilvy work, on the other hand, says it more directly: "Deliver the impossible."

When two sets of creatives are working, almost at the same time (the Ogilvy work was published in September 2011 and the BBDO work in March 2012) with the same operative word, 'impossible', it is not far-fetched to imagine both seeing the Penrose triangle, described as "impossibility in its purest form", as the visual focus.

It is not clear yet whether the Ogilvy work was entered at events such as Cannes and Spikes as the BBDO work was. If the Ogilvy work was entered, it would been entered in the same year as the BBDO work (2012) - at Cannes and in Spikes - which would mean the same juries would have seen both pieces.

If the Ogilvy work or the BBDO work had been entered in a previous 'award' year, it would be an open and shut case of the later entry being a copy of, or inspired by, the previous one. Since that is not the case, it's tricky.

To me, this is a coincidence - but far from being an impossible coincidence.

What will it be to the jury, who will answer the question in the course of the day? We'll have to wait for that.