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Follow UsRecently, a Moroccan ad for snack brand Tagger has been doing the rounds of inboxes of the Indian ad fraternity. The ad bears a striking resemblance to the Mentos ‘Classroom’ TVC rolled out by O&M two years ago
The who’s who of the Indian advertising industry is probably in the loop on this one.
Recently, a Moroccan ad for snack bar brand Tagger has been doing the rounds of inboxes of the Indian ad fraternity. The ad bears a striking resemblance to the Mentos ‘Classroom’ TVC that O&M rolled out in August 2005. The Mentos TVC drew a parallel between the ‘Mentos Life’ and an ‘Ordinary Life’; the story showed a college student who is late for class outsmarting his professor on consuming Mentos. The TVC depicts a student being reprimanded by the teacher for coming late to class. It then cuts to a second situation (the ‘Mentos Life’) where the student walks backward as if leaving the classroom, at which point the teacher insists he sit down.
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Shots from the Mentos TVC |
The Tagger commercial
, created by Moroccan agency Shems, uses the same storyline and backdrop, right down to the guy’s expressions, and the product benefit (‘A life without Tagger’, as opposed to ‘Yeh Hai Aam Zindagi’).
According to the duo behind the Mentos film (Abhijit Avasthi, group creative director, O&M, Mumbai, and Jignesh Maniar, the agency’s associate creative director), the agency received the Tagger commercial over email a few weeks ago. “Initially, we were proud and amused, as imitation is the best form of flattery,” says Maniar. But things got a little nasty when fellow members of the creative fraternity in India started accusing Ogilvy executives of ‘lazy creativity’, clearly hailing the Mentos ad as a copy of the Tagger one.
As a result of these allegations, O&M executives are now contemplating legal action against Tagger’s agency, Shems. Clearly, this is a case of which ad was released first. Maniar states the Tagger commercial released later, sometime in April 2007 (almost two years post the Mentos one). “India is always accused of plagiarism, but in this case, the reverse has happened,” he adds.
Also contemplating legal action along with Ogilvy is Perfetti Van Melle India, makers of Mentos.
