The YouTube "Creative Inspiration" Question

Creative inspiration is hard to come by I know that.

What did we do before YouTube?

Only Dead Fish posted about this brilliant Lastminute.com ad. I loved it - thought that it was funny, smart, made me smile and made me think about Lastminute in a new way.

But isn't it just the same idea as this?

The UK policeman plays the US janitor role, but essentially its exactly the same idea.

Does it matter??

The US version was not an ad. The UK version has a clever twist in the tail and promotes a brand.

I guess that I am trying to work out how far you can get away with an ad "inspired by..." a YouTube clip.

Hmmm.

Comments

[lastiko]

Thank you so much for this ^^

[John]

The answer is that it will be increasingly more difficult to get away with it - both in terms of inspiration as evidenced by the recent online thing that turned the unnoticed gorilla into a bear; and in terms of execution as evdienced by the Berocca nightmare ripoff of the music video.

[Simon Gregory]

Or maybe it's less about gettting away with it and more about accepting and harnessing youtube as a source of inspiration. And not just creatively either - want to know what people are into at the moment? Visit youtube.

Check out these two for example:

Original Viral:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTZ2xpQwpA

Original Viral + Dr Pepper:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x2W12A8Qow&feature=related

[ant]

I think it's going to get easier to get away with, not harder.

And while ripping off ads directly is pretty weak, everything is ripped off of something else, at some level, e.g. Honda's Cog, but I guess really it's about whether you do make the context uniquely on-brand, and relevant...

[branwell]

What about acknowledging the source of the "inspiration" when collecting awards etc? Or would that be awkward and lead to some people not being able to claim the mantle of creative genius? I believe there is no copyright on ideas, so legal claims would not arise.