We love it when our ads get stolen. Literally, pulled off the wall and taken home. Because when an ad stops being an ad and is “art” you’ve made an emotional connection.

We also love stealing from the best. Think about it, stealing from the worst sure doesn’t make sense. We spend a lot of time studying the best at advertising and taking all of those parts and creating a remix. Because, as any musician will tell you- everything is influenced by something.

Theft is Quentin Tarantinos go to solution in every one of his movies. He says he doesn’t do homages, he steals. So, why is “stealing” frowned upon in business? Blame the lawyers, blame patent law, blame copyright law, blame the idea that creativity has to be original- it doesn’t. It just has to be original to you.

We were recently looking at other ad agency introduction videos and came across a video from Crate 47. We’d never heard of Crate 47, and we thought they were some creative chaps from across the pond, except, well, their promo reminded us of something else…

So we went and watched it, and at first, we thought, maybe this wildly successful viral video was actually inspired by the Crate 47 video…

This ad went viral with a bullet, and was reputedly made for $4.5K Of course, having a CEO that had training in comedy with the Upright Citizens Brigade sure helps. Most CEO’s frown against humor- and would never say their product “is fucking great.”

We looked at the dates: DSC: Published on Mar 6, 2012 with 25M views.
Crate 47: Published on Sep 27, 2012 with 43,500 views. We’re guessing it’s pretty obvious who was the chicken and who laid the egg. But, does it matter? No. Crate 47 took an idea, and made it their own. Their claim of being “Strategically creative” was on the money. Why spend inordinate amounts of time thinking up a concept- when there is a successful model of one to copy? They aren’t in the same business- one sells razor blades by mail, and the other- creativity on getting their message out.

Did it work? Well, of the agency videos we’ve been finding, they’ve had a lot more views than most. And, when it was made, they just had an office in Brighton, but, now, they’re in London too. We’re guessing they got some bangers for their pounds.

Considering that the world at large has the attention span of under 9 seconds, and the amount of media they consume is growing at an exponential rate, being able to produce a grand slam home run (a viral video) is great, but, often what will win games is a constant stream of single base hits.

So if you are going to jack some ideas, remember, be nimble, be quick and jump right over the old school shtick that stealing is shameful. Steve Jobs stole his idea on stealing from Picasso, we admit to stealing our ideas on what makes effective advertising from the best in the business.