Back in May 2005, we reported on an incident in which clothing company Crown Farmer claimed Urban Outfitter had stolen its designs and sold them without proper license. It appears the retailer is, again, up to no good, this time, with Johnny Cupcakes which claims the retailer has produced designs very similar to Johnny Cupcakes' which Urban Outfitters had previously seen but declined to license. It appears Urban Outfitters has borrowed heavily from a Johnny Cupcake bomb-dropping design. One time is, perhaps, a coincidence. Two times and it's time for Urban Outfitters to come clean.
UPDATE: Someone's started a blog called Urban Counterfitters taking Urban Outfitters and other retailers to task for their "borrowing" of other's designs.
This at&t billboard from their new campaign has been floating around Flickr for some time now. It, of course, alludes to the SBC acquisition of at&t (guess their doing the lower case thing now) and how that somehow delivers blogging. We suppose it just means they own more of the world's bandwidth so they have the right to say they deliver whatever they want.
Humorously, as is usually the case with large corporation sticking their feet into niche spaces, a Flickr user points out at&t, apparently, has no idea what a blog is according to a screen shot of a search on their website. One would assume these not so trivial oversights would be handled prior to the launch of a multi-million dollar campaign. Oh sorry. We forgot that thing they say about assuming things.
Plageristic kleptomania is alive and well, as it always has been, in the ad industry indicated by this AdPulp find comparing an Art Directors Club Italiano 2005 ad to a One Show 2006 ad. While the stick and carrot thing is nothing new, seeing the concept used in very similar ways in the same industry just a year apart is depressing.
There's conceptual speed thing in the Art Directors Club Italiano ad and an almost "who gives a shit" thing in the One Show version so they each create a different feeling but there's no denying the similarities. Perhaps, that was the intent with the One Show ad in that there are so many pointless award shows, why should one care a this donkey clearly doesn't. Certainly, it's possible each ad was created in a vacuum but in our incestuous little industry, that's highly unlikely. We're just going to assume the One Show is simply riffing off the Art Directors Club in a wink-wink, nod-nod sort of way, adding its own snarky commentary on award shows.
