Flatteringly inspired

Let’s face it. Each of us aspires for recognition – recognition for our work, recognition for love, recognition even for following traffic rules or paying taxes! What matters equally is where this recognition comes from. A colleague recognizing your work perhaps does not matter as much as your boss recognizing it; the latter’s recognition far less valuable compared to that from the management. Likewise your school teacher’s recognition of your homework is definitely far more important than your mom’s!

I believe one of the best sources of recognition though, is one that comes from your closest competitor. As they say, imitation is the best form of flattery, and as I tweak it here, the best form of recognition too! I have often heard salesmen bragging about poaching competitive accounts. It’s almost as big an ego boost as when a pretty girl riding pillion on someone else’s bike glances at you.


That ego trip is seldom possible in marketing functions. It is however extremely flattering when your closest competitor literally copies your business idea, complete with its positioning and messaging. I am glad to have been a victim of one such marketing plagiarism and believe me I am mighty delighted at that! Its one thing for your target audience to relate to your message, the icing on the cake is your competition also believing in it, and in the absence of any major differentiator (for the competitor) copying it word-by-word. How I wish I could share this sample here, only if had not been a public forum and I didn’t value my job (and associated perks) enough!


And there are enough examples of such marketing plagiarism. A few years back, the Miranda campaign featuring a pug was a direct inspiration of the more popular Hutch one. Apparently, the Britannia Little Hearts outdoor campaign was also a straight lift from the same Hutch campaign (I haven’t seen this one though). I doubt if such blatant plagiarism really serves any purpose for the inspired, other than a higher recall often attributed to notoriety rather than popularity. But then, there are enough people who believe in being in the news, whether it is for good reasons or bad. It does give a good chuckle to the original creator though. Check out one over here and another here.


As for me, I cannot do much beyond basking in the glory of the moment, and contemplating adding this to my CV (no kidding – seriously contemplating a line that would read “…credited for creating a new industry category and inspiring competition to follow suit”). Maybe I should also ask this competitor to pay me two months’ salary for making their job so easy. I have seriously incriminating evidence to support my claim – our website statistics clearly reflect their visits in the past two months, and the shameless content copy is proof enough. Until then, enjoy this storyboard of the Mirinda campaign, I guess I don’t need to remind you of the original Hutch commercial.