Skybags: Howzzat, you’re out, caught!

In today’s digital era, where the internet remembers and records virtually anything that is published, and we have ‘search’ to help fading human memories to recall and retrieve, it’s good to be careful. When one is in a creative field, such as advertising, music or films, it’s more important to be careful about where the idea came from. It is very, very difficult to be truly and completely original when one takes into account that professionals in these areas are voracious readers, voracious consumers of content, some of it consciously and some of it unconsciously. So, when one considers how difficult it is to be original, the delight when you see an unusual and entertaining commercial is that much greater. Which of us is not partial to a good commercial? [caption id=“attachment_264248” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Screengrab from YouTube”]  [/caption] Take the new Skybags commercial featuring John Abraham. It’s well casted; John Abraham works well as a scoundrel, the production is competent, the script is a little stretched, but OK.. I smiled…. … and I wondered what it reminded me of. There was this feeling of déjà vu, this gnawing feeling that I had seen this commercial before. The commercial was new, so I hadn’t seen it before. What did this remind me of, then? Jogged my memory a bit… a TV channel promo? Yup, that’s what it was. A similar story, man found in closet, talking his way out of being discovered there by the cuckolded husband – and the husband buys the story… … the man was a storyteller… Storyteller, for a European channel… German? French? French, says my memory. Canal Plus? And I go to youtube and enter Storyteller Canal Plus… And, Bingo! There’s the never-ending debate when something like this happens. Is it a coincidence, is it inspiration – or is it, sadly, just a copy? To me, it’s a copy. A very poor copy. What is it to you? Use the comments option and share your views.