When did stealing work and making it better become a good idea in advertising?

Let’s set the scene. You’ve spent hours working on a pitch for a client that has no morals and you’re waiting to hear back from them.

Hours, weeks and months go by but did you hear anything from the client? Not a dicky bird.

Fast-forward to the awards night and your idea is plastered on the screens – it’s just won campaign of the year. But wait. It’s another agency picking up the award.

You return to your seat in slow motion with a look of despair and a fixed daze of utter disbelief wondering how it all went wrong.

Idea theft is a major nuisance for agencies in this region and something needs to be done about it.

But that something might be difficult when it’s the client sharing your idea with another agency.

How do agencies prevent their ideas being shared? If they copyright the work before the pitch, is it more likely to be snubbed by the client?

And what about the integrity of the agency who wins the pitch? When did it become acceptable for an agency to take on someone else’s idea rather than coming up with their own? Isn’t that their job?

There are copyright laws and best practice but clients are not paying any notice. And when the International Advertising Association has washed its hands of monitoring the situation, how else can it be enforced?

The only way to get away with it, is to make the idea better – Steve Jobs did and it had an unprecedented impact on the electronics consumer market. But how often does that happen in the advertising industry?