It’s that time of the year, where perhaps inspired by Santa’s List, lists of all kinds are being prepared. Tablet has their 100 Greatest Jewish Films, and I am confident that every other major Jewish publication will have similar lists soon, like the 100 Most Influential Jewish Twitters, or the 50 Coolest Jews or whatever link bait unimaginative editors can come up with. Me? I was looking through Ad Week and they had a couple of interesting lists to offer – The 10 Best Commercials of 2011 as well as the 30 Freakiest Ads of 2011. These lists made for some interesting viewing but I didn’t see anything that really inspired me. Thus I had to go back to this past summer for the one ad that kind of cracked me up a little. Sure the content was a bit provocative – lipstick lesbians always are – but that wasn’t it. Here watch this Italian ad for Renault:
Pretty clever right? Publicis Milan had this to say about the ad “We wanted to create an advert that was original, enjoyable and at the same time not vulgar.” Bingo on all fronts. Except for that “original” part. Turns out the Renault Ad is very similar to an Israeli ad for Castro, produced in 2006:
Ha ha. When informed of the alleged plagiarism, a spokesman for the Interpublic Group, the Israeli firm behind the Castro ad said “They do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The close similarities in the two campaigns is obvious, and our work was broadcast back in 2006. However, in this instance, we have chosen to be flattered!”
I am stunned that an international ad firm would produce such an abject rip off, and even more stunned that an Israeli reacted to this offense with magnanimity and good cheer. It must have been Arak day at the office. That or the estrogen in the water kicking in. Who knows. But those were my fave ads of the year, because after all, drama or no drama, who doesn’t love lipstick lesbians?
Speaking of which, this post was not sponsored by the Women’s Gathering in Jerusalem on the 14th of December at the Mikveh.
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Renault and Interpublic are pinkwashers!
😉