I Thought Copywriters Were Supposed To Be Creative

When you work in marketing, you need to come up with ideas for campaigns.  When you need to come up with ideas for campaigns, you can't.  When you can't come up with ideas for campaigns, you look  for inspiration.  When you look for inspiration, you rip off the source material.  Don't rip off the source material.

I was watching a Cleveland Cavaliers "game" last night when I saw a commercial promoting the club, but ripping off of DirecTV's current "When You" campaign (Note: Before you think "game" has unnecessary quotation marks, another pet peeve of mine, you can't really call their performance a game).  I've noticed that this has been happening a lot.  Maybe it's been happening all along and I haven't noticed until recently because my television consumption has gone up tremendously in the past year.  This irks me because there are professionals with commas in their paychecks who are ripping off great copy.  The worst part is, these people are getting away with it.  They're getting away with mediocrity.

I'll link the Cavaliers spot if/when I can find it on YouTube.