Commercial writing, be it creative or otherwise, is a bit like street-fighting. Anything goes, no holds barred, below-the-belt hits, dirty tricks, knuckledusters, knives, it’s all legit.
Rob, steal and plunder writing resources, rip them apart, inject yourself into the material and rebuild to your own liking and just run with it.
But I guess the same applies to any commercial endeavor. It’s all about the owning the idea and making it yours.
There are no hard and fast rules to apply ownership to an idea, so it basically belongs to the one who comes up with it first, or even more importantly, the one who makes it work.
The point being, you can be creative without having to create 100% never-before-seen content from scratch.
This isn’t really a bad thing. Why re-invent the wheel when you already have an idea that can work for you? It may take some tweaking and messing with, but if it works, USE IT!!
This exercise doesn’t come without its own dangers through. There are other people who’ve had this brainstorm before, and they took it in a very wrong direction.
This practice, in the hands of the misguided or those looking for easy gains, is responsible for the all-too-familiar ‘me too’ phenomenon.
That’s when a good idea is copied by all and sundry and used everywhere tastelessly and indiscriminately.
Soon, the original idea loses its value, and all the copycats wonder why ‘their’ idea isn’t working anymore.
It’s one thing to tap into different sources for inspiration, it’s another to lift someone else’s idea lock, stock and barrel and dump it ‘as-is’ into your project.
Originality and novelty sell, and that’s not going to change.
And a damn good thing too, otherwise we’d never see anything new!
Tags: copywriting, idea, steal
