Spot for UBS copied?

 
Advertising The UBS spot for Euro 08 is similar to the Coca-Cola spot for the 2006 World Cup, Publicis confirms. 
After the 40 billion write-offs in the USA, the major bank UBS is hoping to score image points again as a sponsor of 16 public viewing arenas, at least with football fans. To this end, it has launched a broad-based campaign with a TV commercial and posters. At the heart of the campaign designed by Publicis is the idea of an oversized football pitch that will cover the whole of Switzerland in June (see ), but as soon as the commercial flickered across the screens for the first time on Whit Monday, accusations of plagiarism were raised. "Well, someone's been watching the Coca-Cola commercial for the 2006 World Cup very carefully," wrote one commentator on the industry platform persoenlich.com. Another found it "embarrassing to deliver such a 1:1 copy".
And indeed: the Coca-Cola 2006 commercials (see
) and UBS 2008 show striking similarities. For one thing, the basic idea of a huge football pitch that stretches across the whole country is identical - in Coca-Cola's case across Germany, in UBS's case across Switzerland. In both films, a man can be seen again and again driving a lime powder cart across the country and drawing the field lines. In the UBS commercial, this symbol appears at least five times, alternating with a group of men carrying around a soccer goal.Ursula Gamper, responsible for the UBS campaign at Publicis, is by no means clueless. Yes, Publicis was familiar with the Coke commercial at the time. "And when we designed the UBS campaign, we were aware of the similarities," she admits openly. However, she also notes that there had already been comparable subjects with a tennis court instead of a football pitch, even before the World Cup in Germany. "So the subject wasn't entirely new in 2006 either," Gamper justifies.
"There are similarities in terms of the idea of the football pitch. But the UBS commercial also shows various original Swiss locations," says UBS media spokesperson Dominique Gerster after watching the two commercials. Nevertheless, UBS stands behind the campaign. "It works for us," says Gerster. "The motif with the football pitch all over the country lends itself somewhere."
Coca-Cola Switzerland and Coca-Cola Germany did not comment. Corresponding inquiries from Werbewoche remained unanswered.
Markus Knöpfli