Now Orange has made a Sony ad.

There's a thread developing here, isn't there? I've been noting TV ad rip-offs for a while now (here and here), and now there's another one. We've just had BMW doing Honda, now Orange do Sony. When the ad below began on my TV the other night, I thought, 'Here we go: Bravia again.' But it wasn't.



It was Orange, whose marketing continues to get up my nose in all sorts of ways. Not only are they persisting with their wilfully bewildering dolphin/badger/artichoke/frog tariff system (or whatever it is), they've made a Sony ad about it. I mean, it's not quite on the same scale, but don't all these people reaching up for floaty orange things remind you just a weeny bit of all those people reaching up for floaty foamy things?


Presumably the international market has something to do with this. The ad was shot in Buenos Aires, but it could just as well be Paddington or Grand Central. And there's no dialogue. So you can stick whatever voiceover and titles you like on it. Bingo: globally consistent branding, plus lower production costs.

Both spots, of course, are made by Agency Du Jour, Fallon. They're making it pretty easy on themselves these days, aren't they? They must still be laughing even when they've been back from the bank for some considerable time.

A virulent infection in adland?

The latest VW and Audi ads seem to be evidence of a virus infecting the advertising world. The disease leads agencies and their clients to believe that they must make ads with lots of people busily building something related to their brand, in some suitably inventive way. Except they're all looking distinctly uninventive now.

The latest from VW:


The latest from Audi:


From Honda:


From Guinness:


From Orange (complete with hideously patronising oh-so-friendly Scots voiceover):


From Skoda:


I suppose it all started with Cog:


But why must a wheel, once invented (or at least ripped off), be reinvented so many times, for so many different brands? How lazy can you be?

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Update (3/4/08): I've just seen Johnson Banks' post on the same subject. Great minds, and all that - I promise I wasn't copying.