Copy Paste: How Advertising Recycles Ideas

Books about advertising are, more often than not, supposed to act as sources of inspiration. Copy Paste daringly takes the opposite tack.  It is not that the hoards of adverts compiled here are lacking in artistic merit. Au Contraire! The showcased advertisements have been presented at major industry conferences and have won prestigious awards. Another common trait among the campaigns that Copy Paste presents is that all of them are reproductions. Whether that is the result of deliberate plagiarism or unlucky coincidence remains an open question. Copy Paste provides the images and allows the reader to make the judgment call.  A visual lesson in originality: selected campaigns possess unique hashtags that allow readers to interact with Joe la Pompe’s extensive research, cast their opinion online, and make their own judgements.

Copy Paste, Joe la Pompe’s third book, campaigns for more creativity. Through over six hundred ad campaigns featuring under three hundred original concepts, the volume begs the question: coincidence, phenomenon, or shameless plagiarism? To decide, you will have to read it – at least twice.

For nearly 20 years, Joe la Pompe has pursued a passion for uncovering identical adverts that flaunt identical ideas and concepts, but that originate from different countries and periods. Joe la Pompe brings them face to face in the most simple and possible striking way. Working undercover with the help of his iconic mask, today, he is the world’s best known “copycat hunter”. The French blogger is followed by advertisers from around the world who love his revelations though their admiration may swiftly change to bitterness once he catches them.