Opinion: Perspective - Should it really matter if WCRS's TfL ad is a copy?

time to do any work?).

In case you don't know, there's a new ad for Transport for London. It's
by WCRS. Repeat: WCRS; plenty of commentators thought it was by M&C
Saatchi and have been, er, joking about duffing up the creatives there
for being such blatant plagiarists. Now there are a few people at WCRS
who should be looking over their shoulders.

Anyway, the issue is all about the ad's striking resemblance to a film
made by the University of Illinois's Professor Daniel J Simons ten years
ago. The original film was made to illustrate the theory of spatial
awareness; the WCRS ad is designed to encourage drivers to be more
vigilant.

Both films use two teams passing balls to each other. The viewer is
asked to watch and count how many passes the white team makes. After
you've done that and felt deeply smug you got the answer right, you're
asked whether you spotted the man in the bear suit walking among the
players. Which - admit it - you didn't.

WCRS's ad is not a coincidence, it's not a homage, it's not "inspired
by", it's not sub-conscious. It's calculatedly almost exactly the same.
OK, the WCRS film uses eight players instead of six. It's got a
moon-walking bear instead of a chest-thumping gorilla. It's set outside
instead of indoors. But put them side by side and these two babies are
twins. Compare the two at: www.brandrepublic.com/campaign.

Does this matter? If you check the original film as it is posted on the
University of Illinois site, you'll read that the video "may not be
downloaded, saved, copied, reproduced or used for any other purpose".
Which you might assume would sting WCRS into at least letting Prof
Simons know about its TfL ad.

But if you know anything about the legals on this matter, you'll know
that the very act of contacting a copyright holder about using their
material changes the copyist's legal status. And anyway, we've been here
before: copyright is a bugger of a thing to enforce. Adland has got away
with ripping off other people's work for years; some of our best ads
have come this way.

TfL and WCRS are confident they've got a solid legal defence. And the
word from Illinois is one of disappointment, but there seems to be
little appetite for a legal spat. Sorry.

So we're left with the moral and ethical issue. Is it OK for ad agencies
to nick ideas, in fact nick entire concepts, from other people. Isn't
this lazy, cheap, immoral, creatively bankrupt and stealing (cheating
others out of financial compensation for their work)? It's definitely
some and perhaps all of those things.

But still, should we care? One reason why we should: the status of
advertising and advertising agencies is on the wane; it's more vital
than ever that agencies underline their alchemic ability to use
creativity to transform brands and change attitudes. If agencies are
simply regurgitating existing ideas, they are complicit in the
commoditisation of the industry.

One reason why we shouldn't care: to most of the people who have seen
this ad, it's fresh, arresting and thought-provoking (and how many other
ads can you say that about?).

Of course, everyone has to make their own mind up on the moral issue;
WCRS's getout is that the road safety cause is good. On a small budget,
the ad is generating enormous standout. Maybe it will save lives. Even
if it saves one life, it's perhaps worth the industry's wrath.