Unintentional Copycats

Is it mere coincidence when multiple brands use very similar imagery, jokes, music, or other elements to promote their products and services?

Probably.

In one 24 hour period last week, I noticed both Mini (launching their new minivan thingee) and Koodo Mobile (launching their mobility service) using a cheesy 70s/80s style workout motif.

This seems to happen fairly often, but I wonder how frequently we (as consumers) don't see this sort of thing. I imagine there are lots of cases where an advertiser sees somebody else using "their" upcoming imagery, music, etc. in another company's campaign and has to immediately pull the plug on their own work to avoid looking like copycats.

It's avoidable in some cases. When reality TV first took off, every second brand seemed to be using a Survivor or Big Brother or Who Wants To Be... motif in their marketing. Same thing when rap became commercially successful -- almost every ad targeting kids and young adults used a (badly written) rap.

That's just laziness. It's one thing to try to associate with a trend. It's something else to cookie-cutter something obvious.

The Mini and Koodo example seems like one of those rare cases where the agency wasn't trying to cash in on a specific fad, but coincidentally decided on a similar theme -- probably for very different reasons.

And then there's the other end of the spectrum... Don't get me started on how almost every car brand simultaneously decided to offer "Employee Family Pricing". Yeesh.