There is no dearth of talent in Pakistan; it is aplenty in people when it comes to creating memes, playing pranks, inventing hacks and such. Yet when it comes it creating ad copies the marketing team and ad agencies here go the Snoop Dogg route and drop it like it’s hot.
Amongst the many that have been copied, the ad for Olivia that ran during Pakistan Super League is what created the most buzz. Why? Because when we say copy we don’t mean the ad was reshot frame by frame, we actually mean it was picked up AS IS with just minor tweaks – replacing the BBlunt Salon Secret product pack with Olivia’s. Yup, true story! Basically, mehnat kissi ki ajar aap ka.
Just to put things into perspective the BBlunt ad starred Kareena Kapoor Khan costed around 5 crores because that is what she charged for a beverage brand in India. Now add the shooting, production, and location cost to this. Do the math. It must have costed a lot of zeros to Godrej Group. And do you know how much it cost the Maskatiya Industries to copy it? Well, we’ll let the court decide.
1- BBlunt vs Olivia
Here are the two ads:
2- Streax vs Olivia
This is not the first time Maskatiya Industries had piggybacked on someone else’s budget spend. They applied the same formula with the Streax ad staring Malaika Arora Khan.
Here is the original Streax ad:
Maskatiya Industries removed their ad, but just mentally replace the Streax pack with Olivia and that’s the ad.
3- Binani Cement vs Almirah
The Almirah ad in the end said ‘Exclusive range by Almirah’. How about you try to make exclusive ad copies as well?
4- Google vs Eiwan Developments
With a tagline that reads ‘Building bonds and beyond’, we would recommend for you to first build original copies and look beyond copying ads.
5- H&M vs J. Fragrances
The copy of the ad is all about how people follow you and therefore you should be original. Err, ironic, much?
Monkey see, monkey do
What are you doing to your brands marketers? One of the top rules of marketing is to not become a me-too brand…this is not Fight Club. There. Are. Rules. Above all there is something called ethics. Look it up in a dictionary. And if you are too lazy to even do that, here let us help.
