You probably haven’t heard anyone call you a “Copy Cat” since grade school, or since the last time you chased your older sister down the hall to her bedroom. In the social setting being a “Copy Cat” usually isn’t a good thing, if you’re on the being copied side it’s usually annoying.
Being a “Copy Cat” in the advertising and creative world usually refers to someone who lacks creativity and originality. “Copy Cats” usually lack the ability to come up with creative advertising ideas on their own and the effectiveness of the advertising suffers.
Recently the AdBeef community has been discussing this remake ad by SilverJet airlines. Feel free to give your beef about the ad with the community, but we’d like to share a few figures that might help us understand if this remake is getting any traction or not.
This ad originally ran on October 4, 2007. Searching for news results since then, for SilverJet, produces four (4) Google News results, and 116 blog references since October 1 (so, within about a week). Each of the news items reference this ad and it’s spoof off the earlier British Airways ad. The remake is picking up steam.
Another few interesting items to note about this remake:
The ads were similar enough that the association between the two is easily made. In this example both British Airways and Silverjet were in the same industry, and the iconic elements of the original ad were strongly duplicated.
The ad should preferably be unique in some way. In the British Airways, and SilverJet the example the SilverJet commercial used fewer people and the ad cost much less to produce. This financial and personnel difference made it newsworthy, thus the press picked it up.
The Last Pixel:
Remaking iconic ads can be creative if executed with detail. The ads need to be very similar, but uniquely different to give the community or press something to discuss or emphasize.