Post Endorsement
The advertising industry spends as much time on sites like YouTube and Vimeo looking for inspiration as they do complaining about how lazy everyone has become because of it. There are countless examples of ads that have clearly ripped off existing content, but the discussion has mainly been concerned with whether it's OK or not to 'be inspired' by such content, or if 'stealing' is just creativity by another name.
Since we find solving problems more intriguing than just discussing what causes them, we felt honour-bound to spend some time thinking about this. Is there a way to acknowledge the original work of the artists? To create more relevant communications for our brands or our those of our clients? To spend less money on redoing something that already has been done, and share the love with the original creators?
In the video above, it is impossible not to think about Nintendo, about the hours you've spent with Tetris, with the classic soundtrack in your ears and that heavy Gameboy in your hands. This animation is advertising Nintendo whether the creator likes it or not. Traditionally some creatives working on Nintendo would see that the clip had been viewed 125 000 times and think that redoing it would be an excellent idea because it's already been proven to work.
But what if we could let the clip be as it is: relevant, engaging and original, and then endorse it by paying the animator for the rights and by sponsoring his Vimeo page? We would brand the page rather than smack a logo on the end of the clip (or making a worse version). By doing this we would support creative people, we would endorse content relevant to the brand and we get content that has already been proven to have a 'viral' effect.
What do you think?
