Toshiba’s New (Copycat) Ad Reduces the Brands Credibility

Since my exposure to the world of advertising, I quickly realized that it’s not the most ethical business out there.  People in the industry sometimes take what they want, and do what they want, with reckless abandon.  One of the most common things taken, for lack of a better word, in the industry are ideas. Ideas for ads and campaigns are recycled from previous campaigns or, in the case of the latest Toshiba ad, artists, really good, creative artists who get no recognition for their work by the agency.

View the new “Space Chair” commercial created by Grey London for Toshiba.

After watching, you’ll notice the ad is for a new Toshiba monitor, which supposedly offers a brand new viewing experience for the customer. This is expressed in the strapline, “Armchair viewing, redefined.”

When I first watched it, I thought to myself wow, “That’s a pretty cool ad. I’ve never seen something like that done before. Gotta hand it to the agency for coming up with such a creative idea.” ( Sidebar: I think the idea is creative, but I’m not sure how well it advertises the product. That’s a different story though).

After watching the ad on Brand Republic, I browsed through some of the comments to find out that the idea was inspired by an artist named by Simon Faithfull. Check out his film, Escape Vehicle No. 6. , commisioned in 2004 by The Arts Catalyst.  I couldn’t seem to find an embed link on YouTube, but you can watch it here. Watch it then get back to reading this post.

Faithfull’s film and Toshiba’s new ad are pretty similar, right? If it wasn’t for the insanely high quality visuals of the Toshiba version, they would nearly be carbon copies.

The Arts Catalyst said they’re flattered that Toshiba realized Simon Faithfull’s vision, but that they are asking Toshiba for some credit.

I haven’t seen Toshiba give poor Simon any credit for what he did. I think he deserves kudos. I tend to lose some respect for brands that don’t give proper credit to artists for their original ideas. When you write an research paper, you cite it correctly right? If you fail to cite, your work can be considered plagiarism. We were taught that at a young age.  Toshiba’s agency plagiarized a little bit here, and it reflects the brand too because they signed off on it.

What do you guys think? Do brands lose credibility by failing to give proper credit to an artists work? Or does it just reflect badly on them in general? Or maybe it doesn’t matter to you at all, but either way, feel free to chime in with your opinion in the comments section.

UPDATE:

Someone who worked with Toshiba on this project reached out. Here’s her reply.

I’m working with Toshiba on this project, and I thought you’d be interested to know that Toshiba’s new ‘Space Chair’ ad was inspired by a sub culture of scientists and artists who send objects to the edge of space using weather balloons. Grey London collaborated with a number of talented
individuals, including British artist Simon Faithfull, to re-create the concept of launching a generic chair into space, and by using their own HD cameras, to demonstrate how Toshiba technology can take something ordinary and make it extraordinary.