Lady Gaga stole my lion

During my ritual morning procrastination, I was scanning the local online news. This time of year is quite unusual here in Melbourne, in that December is one of the few months where men in tight shorts jumping on each other's backs trying to catch a football doesn't make the front page news.

(In case your wondering, the football I'm referring to is called ‘Aussie rules', which in itself is a misnomer because to the outsider there don't appear to be any rules whatsoever.)

After scrolling past the results of our state election (where we got bored with the current guy and elected the other one), I came across a picture of ‘The Pantsless One,' aka ‘She of questionable tackle,' aka Lady Gaga. Like most, I clicked on it without thinking to see a) what she isn't wearing b) who she's pissed off c) what cause she's championing today. ‘A' wasn't a surprise at all — no pants. ‘B' turned out to be me, because ‘C' was a campaign we'd been working on for half a year and were about to launch.

After I'd discounted all possibility of the Gaga actually stealing our idea, and trying my best not to throttle everyone who said “Hey, at least it proves it was a great campaign!” I started to think more about how often this happens. You know, when three identical campaigns come out simultaneously. Don't worry, I'm not going to bore you with the whole ‘original idea' debate. After all, that's been done before.

What I'm really interested in is why this actually happens. In an industry that encourages people to think differently, how come, on a regular basis, we end up thinking the same?

Oh, and Sarah Palin.

I'd love to hear your opinions on why these two inconveniences actually exist.

Cheers

Scot van den Driesen
scot.vandendriesen@clemenger.com.au