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Telenor Encourages Stealing Ideas in Tv Adverts

By Jamil Arif on March 3, 2010



Whatever happened to originality? Why is there suddenly no creativity left amongst the ‘biggest and brightest’ in our industries and why do companies think they can get away with stealing ideas and concepts?

I was astonished to watch the new Telenor Easy Paisa commercial on the television the other day. It is unbelievable that a company of Telenor’s stature thinks that they can pinch the concept of a huge TVC and no one will point it out. Unfortunately some people have seen the HTC Corporation advert Telenor stole from.

HTC Corporation, the High Tech Computer Corporation, certainly won’t lodge a complaint who would they complain to after all? Many people in Pakistan have not heard of the Taiwan-based manufacturer of smartphones although some in the telecommunications industry certainly have.

HTC TV Commercial:

You can find many more versions of this HTC Ad available on youtube.

Telenor Tv Commercial:

It bothers me that there is such a dearth of creativity in our advertising industry but what is worse is that Telenor did not demand originality of concept and approved such a blatant copy of the HTC commercial without a thought spared for ethical concerns.

Ethics in the advertising industry seem to be dying a rapid death as large companies with millions of rupees to spend encourage stealing ideas that have worked instead of coming up with new concepts themselves. The tragedy is that as this approach of ‘stealing ideas’ for creative output becomes more rampant, the audience is also becoming savvier. We know how to search the internet and most of the most popular advertisements worldwide find themselves on our facebook pages. Perhaps it’s time to send a message to companies like Telenor stating categorically that we are not fools and we know when they have stolen a campaign idea.

Stealing certainly pays off in the short run but when you use an idea that is already out there we will find out and it does offend us that you are unethical!

Posted on 3 March 2010

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  • Ali Imran

    It is surprising to see the new ad of Telenor Easy Paisa, I am actually wondering if we have any one left with creative brains in our advertising industry???

    and Telenor, they are step ahead…. thanks to internet who have helped us to know the orginality

  • hira

    Come on guys!! fingers are also used in other Ads forexample Ford fingers, yelow pages etc etc. Then who will decide who copied who?
    use of fingers to illustrate an idea is not propritary to anyone. Its the story line and the message that has to be original!!

  • anam

    I dun know y you people criticize on everything, cant you just be thankfull to these organizations who are putting efforts to develop technology and tools in Pakistan to make it a better place……. I am marketing student ( MBA marketing specialzing in advertising) and there is nothing wrong in the ad as far advertising ethics as concerned, plus there is no cheating in the ad. There are millions of ads and billions of concepts delevoped everyday by humans ( remembr guyz not computers but humans) and therefore similarilty can be observed in many ads but than again if the product category is different there is no ethical issue in having some similarities. If concept can explain the product well its good to go.

    And mind it this is not my thought but in actual its something what we call advertising ethics and according to the ethics the concept and execution of the ad is superbly done and no issues of cheating is there.

    beeps: i am making an advertising report on easypaisa and this definitely does not stand any truth.

  • anam

    i am a marketing student specializing in advertising , the ads has no cheating issues, infact its superbly executed with a great concept. bravo to easypaisa :)

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