I’ve just been reading a great post on the Creative Review blog which covers a growing issue in advertising at the moment.
Namely, the increasing crossover between videos on Youtube, and mainstream advertising which may or may not have been inspired by the original.
Honda’s Let It Shine commercial led to similar thoughts from Carl and Dave.
And then there’s T-Mobile commercials, or Silent Discos?
Now, I’m not going to suggest that there’s a right or wrong answer for every instance. After all, ‘Bad artists copy, Great artists steal’, to quote Picasso. But it is important to keep in mind that the wrong decision is going to be increasingly messy – after all the sharing networked world feeds as much on negativity (perhaps moreso!) than positivity.
And the flipside is a mainstream adoption of the remix and mash-up which mainstream media is often fighting against. But the generally accepted online culture tends towards attribution in the majority of cases, whereas the professionals seem more reluctant in general to acknowledge the sources of inspiration.
Maybe it’s the tradition of seeing creativity as moments of divine inspiration, as eloquently discussed by Elizabeth Gilbert in a TED talk.