McCann faces the heat for its Grand Prix winning ad

Plagiarism is proving costly for Indian agencies this year. In the third instance of alleged plagiarism, the AGC has put up for a jury review the Print campaign McCann did for its client ATSS

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Delhi | April 13, 2013

The Grand Prix winning print ad for Active Total Security Systems titled "High Rise" (Click on the image to enlarge)

The Grand Prix winning print ad for Active Total Security Systems titled "Villa" (Click on the image to enlarge)

The Grand Prix winning print ad for Active Total Security Systems titled "Bank" (Click on the image to enlarge)

The misery for Goafest 2013 and the Creative Abbys continues as plagiarism seems to be the culprit of this season, binding everybody in tangled knots. In the latest and third instance of an Abby winner coming under the scanner of the Awards Governing Council (AGC) for alleged plagiarism – this time it is a Grand Prix – is McCann Worldgroup India for its Print campaign for its client Active Total Security Systems (ATSS).

According to well-placed sources, the AGC has been informed about this campaign and the auditors, KPMG, will write to the jury on Monday on whether McCann's Grand Prix should be withdrawn.

The insinuation is that the idea for the McCann work was picked from a print ad for a Mio GPS print ad done in February 2008. The only difference between the McCann ad and the Mio ad is that McCann used tangled houses in its work while the Mio GPS ad showed roads tangled up in a knot. The tangled look is uncannily similar. The Mio GPS ad was created by Bates Asia Shanghai.

The print ad for Mio GPS (Click on the image to enlarge)

It is likely that the jury may vote for withdrawal of the Grand Prix on grounds that the work was not original.

On Friday, yesterday, DDB Mudra was stripped of its silver Abby in Print for its work done for an Electrolux campaign. The campaign which reads 'Keep them new with Fabriguard drum' was found to be very similar to a campaign for LG washing machines, created by Y&R, Sao Paulo, Brazil in April 2012.

The similarities between the two campaigns were brought to the AGC's notice on Thursday. The Electrolux campaign has also won a silver Abby in the Outdoor category, but the jury is yet to vote on whether to withdraw the award. DDB Mudra's tally is now down to 15 metals and could further come down to 14.

And, on Thursday, in the first instance of a winning campaign being stripped of its medals was BBDO Proximity for its work on DHL. On Thursday evening, the AGC decided to withdraw the two gold Abbys and one silver Abby won by BBDO Proximity for the DHL campaign following insinuations of plagiarism. The insinuation doing the rounds was that work done by Ogilvy Hong Kong was plagiarised by BBDO Proximity for the DHL work.

Also read: Goafest 2013: BBDO loses its 2 gold and one silver Abby for its DHL work

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

Info@BestMediaInfo.com