Did Motorola rip off a Talking Heads song?

Talking Heads: Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, David Byrne and Jerry Harrison (via Slate)

It's always a hard call when advertisers decide to use "original" music in an ad that is heavily evocative of an established song.

Listen to this ad, and make note of any classic songs that come to mind:

Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Yeah, me too. But is it plagiarism? That's for lawyers to decide.

From inside the ad agency world, I can tell you exactly how this went down. Creative teams often draw inspiration from songs they like. The ones with very healthy budgets, and willing rock stars, may actually get the chance to licence that song. But that's the exception.

Often, the song even gets used in the creative presentation, or in the case of a TV ad, it might be used to score the animatic. (A moving storyboard, used in pre-production.) Even early edits may have that song in them, just to help with pacing and tone.

But if the song is, ultimately, unattainable, the team eventually needs to brief a commercial composer. These briefings often include "something like [name of song or artist]" or the song itself may be used as an example in the briefing. This is normal.

For example, when we were doing a government of Canada ad a few years ago, I briefed the composer using Arcade Fire videos. However, I didn't say "make it sound like Arcade Fire," or "Make it sound like 'The Suburbs' or 'We Used to Wait'," I told told him I wanted "a contemporary alt-rock sound that will appeal to 20-somethings but still be appropriate for a government job training ad." The result was just what we wanted, but it was its own thing.

Even emulating a distinctive style can be problematic. In 1992, Tom Waits sued Frito-Lay for hiring a singer who sounded like him for an ad. He was awarded more than two million dollars.

The Motorola case is a little less open and shut. But it did catch the attention of Talking Heads/Tom Tom Club drummer Chris Frantz. Chris is married to Bassist Tina Weymouth, who wrote the bassline that the ad music partially emulates.

Chris asked his Facebook network, "My friends, if you have a moment, please click on this link and scroll down to "Play Video." Play the video and please tell me your thoughts. Thanks."

The verdict by friends and fans was that they didn't just hear "Psycho Killer" in the ad, but also Tom Tom Club's hit "Wordy Rappinghood."

Some felt it was a stretch. But at a time when Sam Smith willing pays Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne for "accidentally" lifting the structure of a hit song, or Robin Thicke and Pharrel try to pre-emptively sue the family of the artist they were "inspired" by, these are high-stakes issues.

What do you think?

Too close for comfort?

As anyone in the business can tell you, advertising is pretty conservative in nature. Sure, we wear jeans to work and have the vintage action figures arranged on our desks in obscene tableaux, but we're not in the business of exposing our clients to great risks. For that reason, advertising seldom leads popular culture, but rather reflects it. Because, like Hollywood (which is also now driven by investors and focus groups) the ad industry usually wants ideas that it knows will work.

This pressure to deal in known quantities doesn't just lead to advertising cliches. As agencies mine our increasingly recycled pop culture for cool memes, it can also lead to some rather troubling infringements of creative rights.

Just last night, I caught a Microsoft ad on TV that looked a lot like a commoncraft video, with simple paper cutouts manipulated by on-screen hands, deadpan voiceover delivery, and all.

I can't for the life of me find this ad online, but here's what I can only assume was the "inspiration":



We worked with commoncraft to do a social PSA for one of our government clients last year, so it's possible Lee was involved in this. But I doubt it.

You see, copycatting in advertising happens all the time. Just last week, Cundari Group in Toronto were accused of ripping off U.S. pop artist Thomas Allen in an ad for a Vancouver bookstore. The evidence below comes via Agency Spy:



The artist was so mad at what he calls the "theft" of his trademark cutout style, he decided to put the case forward to the court of social media, starting with his blog:

"I contacted a friend who is a well-known and highly respected figure in the world of design. Since this wasn’t a real campaign, he advised me not to waste any more time pursuing it. Instead (since Cundari’s chosen to walk on the wrong side of a very fine line), he suggested that I publicly shame them because 'they should know better'."

Another, perhaps less severe, form of copycatting I've noticed lately is HSBC's ad featuring the Chinese man fishing with trained birds:



Which, with the exception of the oddly out-of-place Canadian dude, is a pretty clean lift from the cormorant fisherman scene in BBC's Wild China.

So, what is inspiration and what is theft? In his correspondence with Thomas Allen, Cundari SVP CD Andy Manson retorted:

"Inspiration can come from anywhere. We were inspired by your technique just as you were inspired by the artists who painted the original pulp novel covers. So nobody is stealing anything from anybody. Think of all the executions that Andy Warhol’s lithograph technique has inspired. Or that celebrates Shepard Fairey’s style. Or Peter Beard’s. Or Barbara Kruger’s. Or Robert Indiana’s. The list goes on and on. Advertising routinely reflects the society around it and, as a result, what is popular.
Nobody was trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes."

What do you think?

It bears repeating...

I missed the original broadcast, but apparently the U.S. Air Force Reserve ran this ad during the Super Bowl (link HERE - via AdFreak)

Don't look for it on YouTube, or on the Reserves' recruiting site, in the news, or almost anywhere else. It's essentially been scrubbed from the Internet.

Why? If you're a White Stripes fan, you probably have a clue. From their site:



Despite the damning move of having eliminated the offending spot with extreme prejudice, the Air Force issued an official statement: "We had no intention to use existing music from The White Stripes or any other performer. Any similarity to them or other artists was certainly not intentional."

I don't buy it. I've been doing this long enough to know that clients and agencies do get "inspired" a little too literally by copyrighted material when scoring new ads. Particularly after finding out that the artist they wanted to use is either too expensive, or refuses to sell out.

Just five years ago, Tom Waits sued General Motors Corp. and McCann Erickson over an Opel ad that used a singer and musicians imitating his trademark style (after he turned them down).

For those of you unfamiliar with the White Stripes, here's the original song.

Judge for yourself: