School of getting famous # 008: "Recycle"

This summer Studio Total burned 100 000 swedish kronor in order to show injustices in wages between men and women. A lot of people in the advertising industry have complained that our campaign wasn't "original".
Like we ever said it was.
In fact destroying money (and getting attention for it) is as old as money. The early christians did it to show their contempt for materialistic ways of the Roman patricians (actually it was coins thrown into a fire). Italian surrealists did it. Russian anarchists.
(There is a beautiful anecdote from fin de siècle Paris where a famously cheap Baron drops a golden coin on the floor. He goes down on all four to search for it. Another nobleman puts fire to a banknote, worth ten times the amount of the coin. He holds out the burning note to help the Baron search)
And the KLF did it.

All of these times the bonfires have gotten a lot of attention. And none have been original. In fact (by definition) only one person can be truly original, and that is the first person in the world to put fire to a banknote. Ironically, as much attention as that might have gotten him in the day he is today totally forgotten.

So what do we learn from this? We learn that 99,999% of the time, recycling an idea is better that coming up with a new one. Because our aim is NOT to be original but to get attention. (What perhaps is original is burning money or starting a political party as MARKETING but that is another discussion)

Now, to show you another example, let's move on to something more recent. A week ago Studio Total helped amelia with a campaign in wich they put in an ad for a "beach tester". 
The ad was featured in blogs, TV, radio and newspapers all over the world. Just in Sweden the media value would be calculated in millions of dollars. Now where did we get the idea?

* Well, in 2006 Studio Total helped Canal+ put in an job-ad for Zombiehunters. The Ad spread across the world and millions and millions of people heard of it. The CEO for Canal+ called it the best value for money advertising ever.

* In 2009 we put in another ad for "Festivalbesökare". It was featured in all the biggest swedish magazines as well as in countless blogs. During the time, arvikafestivalen sold a record amount of tickets. The same year, an australian agency got even more attention offering "the best job in the world".

So, was our new ad "original". Hell no. However, it IS sort of ironic that most of the criticism comes from people whose alternative to our non-original marketing consists of the truly original art of buying advertising space in TV4.

*

Some cars.

*

För skvallerintresserade.