WCRS ad for TfL faces copyright claim

by Colin Marrs, Campaign 11-Mar-08, 18:15

LONDON - WCRS is under fire for a new ad which bears a remarkable similarity to a video produced by US academics in 1999.

The ad, Do the Test, was produced by the agency for Transport for London to highlight how easy it is for drivers to miss the presence of cyclists on the road.

But earlier today, the clip was removed from YouTube "due to a copyright claim from a third party".

The WCRS ad asks the viewer to count the number of passes made by a basketball team during a passage of play.

It then reveals that while the viewer was concentrating on counting the passes, they missed the presence of a person in a bear suit, moonwalking through the crowd.

However, a video which is virtually identical was copyrighted by US professor Daniel J Simons in 1999.

Simons, who works at the University of Illinois Visual Cognition Lab, produced the video to demonstrate a spatial awareness theory.

A user who saw the clip on Campaign's website contacted us and said: "The ad is absolutely identical except they have turned a gorilla into a bear."

Click here to view the WCRS ad
Click here to view the University of Illinois video

Comments

Victor Houghton - 13/03/2008

Two years ago there was a Sainsbury TV ad with a man in a gorilla suit wandering around the store. Shoppers were so intent on their task they didn't notice. No balls, but same idea, different execution.

Joel Thomson - 25/03/2008

Surely you're not suggesting this isn't blatant plagiarism? Even if this were just a case of the idea being the same, it’s clear that the agency has lifted it from the University of Illinois video because the execution is near as identical. Creative teams spend so much time in YouTube looking for reference for their work it’s only surprising that this kind of thing doesn’t happen more frequently. I’m confident the intention isn’t to be plagiaristic, it’s just so easy to end up in common creative territories, and soon after in common creative executions. In the case of the moon-walking bear though, it’s just lazy and the University should hold the agency up for ridicule.