Imitation is not flattery. It's irritating.

The ad above was released by The Hindu for their theatre festival.
The other one was released by our client Vijay Karnataka for their theatre festival. A full 6 years ago.

"It's not copied, it's inspired."
Sure. In which case a photocopier is the world's epitome of creative originality. Drama, cops, errant rider, theatre festival. Even identical twins have differences.

The drill is simple for a creator of advertising. Understand your product, understand your consumer, make one relevant to the other, create the work. But there are other responsibilities too. A preliminary research to verify the originality and freshness of the idea, to acknowledge and accept that it may have been done before and ensure that posts such as these don't get written months down the line.

Our work like most of our work was created with minimal budgets, shot by our own team, features struggling actors, one our own employees. Copying the ad isn't just a disservice to creative professionals, it is unfair to them too.

Sorry <insert The Hindu's agency's name here>. We're not flattered, not in the least bit.