A week ago Cadbury Chocolates Ireland announced the winner of their Cadbury Apprentice Contest to design a new Cadbury Milk Bar wrapper. All was well and the two top designers got well over 25,000 votes each. On Feb 15, 2010 they picked the winner, Sinead Costello. A lot of people voted for the design, but by the end of the day though, comments like this were appearing on the Facebook page: 
It appeared that the entry was pretty blatantly copied from a piece called Waterfall Transforming Into White Hooded Monks.
Here are the two pieces below:
Needless to say there are some striking similarities in the waterfall section. Similar direction and an almost identical pattern.
The real give away is where the ‘milk’ breaks mid stream in some rocks, and the placement of the hoods and ‘monks’ is pretty much unforgivable. See close up below:
Plagiarizing works is nothing new, but in an almost admission of guilt, Sinead has apparently deactivated her Facebook page, probably due to the sheer amount of criticism she may have been receiving.
The real loser here is Cadbury though. Crowd sourcing is a great way to engage consumers for local markets and build a reputation, but crowd sourcing also involves the public and their apparently devilish ways.
Cadbury may have seen some advantage in the fact that any publicity is good publicity (hence this post) but it seems that the disheartened other designers who hopefully have not done such work, may have lost their enthusiasm for such a campaign.
Cadbury did respond with this though:
In Cadbury’s defence, they do have a rule that entrants “must ensure that: (a) The entry is the entrant’s original creation and has not been copied, adapted or amended.”
Is it plagiarism? And how does Cadbury come out of this?
UPDATE: The term that should be used is spec work, not crowd sourcing considering there was no intention of collaboration between designers. Credit to David Airey for catching my mistake.
UPDATE: Cadbury had this to say:
Congratulations Paul!
I don’t think there’s really anything that the design community can do to effectively stop it. In this case, Cadbury has to choose another winner, but in the end they’ll be viewed (by most) as the victim of a scam. No black eye, if you will. And I’d also wager that very few companies will hear about this story, and so they’ll still be willing to ask for crowdsourced work. There is the illusion of a beautiful cost-benefit ratio and very low risk, so they’ll keep doing it.
Here’s something to consider: even without crowdsourcing, wouldn’t wannabe designers still attempt to pass off plagiarized work as their own? I believe they do it all the time.
By no means is this little hiccup going to stop crowd sourcing, it is a great tool. In fact, the most effective and popular adverts during the Super Bowl were consumer generated.
The other great thing about crowd sourcing was that it was the ‘crowd’ that caught the plagiarism, not the company! So it is partly self regulating. Had this happened before the contest ended, it wouldn’t be a story.
I feel quite bad for the other finalists to be honest!
Hi Benjamin,
It’s a typical spec work scenario, but it’s not actually crowdsourcing.
Jeff Howe, the man who coined Crowdsourcing the word, wrote Crowdsourcing the book, runs Crowdsourcing the website, and Twitters by the handle Crowdsourcing recently said that sites like Crowdspring (who make a profit through designers working on spec) “short-circuit the promise of crowdsourcing” itself.
http://twitter.com/Crowdsourcing/status/9387850920
Found here:
http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo_blog/index.php/snippets-crowdsourcing-writing-on-spec-design-contest-edition/
That is a good point, technically there was no collaboration (that I know of) or at least no legitimate collaboration. I”ll add an update shortly.
Hi Benjamin.
Great post.
Let me introduce myself. My name is Steven and I am the brother of Paul Ruane who came second in this competition so obviously anything I say is appropriately tinged.
Crowdsourcing is always going to be something the the design community will have to put up with. We can embrace it or run from it but either way it will be here for a long time so that is one thing. It seems the trend these days is that content or quality runs second to causing the biggest splash when it comes to advertising in PR. This I feel originates in the desire to see ROI on what can be massive amounts of money paid by brands to agencies. The agency can run any type of campaign that collects data and say “Look, we’ve got you 10,000 email addresses.
This competition was run by Ogilvy Mather Irl on behalf of Cadbury, their clients. The competition was never about the wrapper and was always about getting as many names, phone no.s and emails via the ‘voting’ system, the wrapper was secondary. I should at this pint say that none of this comes from sour grapes but if rules are there why not stick to them.
We have contacted Ogilvy (2 days ago at time of writing) and have heard nothing. This is one of the worlds leading companies in the field of advertising and branding. They can demand massive sums from clients with the promise that “we help our clients build their business by creating brands that live as part of consumers’ lives and command their loyalty and confidence”. Given the farce that this event has already turned into and the potential for any amount of negative PR arising from this issue,especially over social media, if they do not sort it properly I am surprised how a company of the size and stature of Ogilvy can be so slow to react. Is this who Cadbury are entrusting their brand to.
The issue was brought to attention by a Shantal Foley on our company’s facebook page. As you have mentioned there are alot of similarities, way too many to be an accident so my question is this. Ogilvy, Someone without any shadow of doubt, breaks a rule clearly stated and posted by your company, as part of a project for a paying client of yours. You had not noticed this but it has been brought to your attention. There is no way the result can stand… What are ye going to do.
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Congratulations to you and your brother!
[...] ripped off the title of Donald Trump’s show – read about the wrapper controversy here), sooooo the grand prize went to Paul Ruane from County Kerry who turned the iconic Cliffs into [...]
you nd ur brother made alot of people in dublin very upset
I think Paul’s entry is a lot more attractive in any case, as it doesn’t attempt to combine two disparate elements in quite an amateur way. Good catch on this one by the community, but it’s a real shame stuff like this keeps happening.
Thanks for the congrats
@glenn… how exactly did we make people upset. We simply played by the rules set down by the organisers of this competition and were expecting that everyone else did the same. They did not and it was dealt with as it should have been.
Hi Steven and other commentors. Steven if your brother had played by the rules of the competition he wouldn’t have so blatantly copied his entire design from a photo of the cliffs of moher, which would have been easy for him given his profession. It looks to me like he found a picture of the cliffs and simply changed it to look like chocolate, how is this any different to what the rightful and voted for winner did? It seems to me like someone is a bit peeved that he didn’t win and it is such a shame that he is such a sore loser!
@Laura I answered what (I can only assume is your remark) on the facebook page. In summary there are 2 words to say to you ‘plagiarism’ and ‘inspiration’… Check them out!
“but in an almost admission of guilt, Sinead has apparently deactivated her Facebook page”…. of course the poor girl would have deactivated her page! What with relatives of paul posting abusive messages! I think you are all forgetting that this poor girl is only eighteen years of age! Not once has she posted taunting messages on Pauls page, she has accepted that he has now won! The competition is over @Steven, go home and congratulate your brother, stop picking fights with people who are probably under the age of eighteen although with your attitude.. “here are 2 words to say to you ‘plagiarism’ and ‘inspiration’… Check them out!” you are probably below their level.
Wow can’t believe she cheated her way in. Glad someone spotted it. Well done Paul
[...] points along the way. It gave us great insights into various issues like spec-work and the possible problems with same, how brands are using social media to build communities amongst their consumers and the [...]
[...] with many talking points along the way. It gave us great insights into various issues like crowdsourcing and the possible problems with same, how brands are using social media to build communities amongst their consumers and the role of [...]