February 4, 2013

The rest of the story on Dodge Ram's God Made A Farmer commercial

The internet is up in arms that the best spot in the Super Bowl is a ripoff.

Ram's ad features a speech Paul Harvey made to the Future Farmers of America in 1978, just like an earlier video made by Farms.com.

Ram's Keep Plowing site clearly links to Farms.com, although neither mentions the original video.
Getting lost in the hubbub is the fact that Ram and their agency, The Richards Group, have a nice social component about donating a million dollars to the FFA.

Could they have done a better job anticipating and reacting to the charges of plagiarism? Sure. Should they have called out the original on their site? Maybe. But did they actually do anything wrong? I don't think so.

If you want to dig a bit deeper, there's a good recap of the scandal as it unfolded at adland.tv.

It's also worth noting that The Farms.com video is not the only other time Paul Harvey's speech has been put to a slideshow.

An idea doesn't have to original for an execution to be great.

I still think it was the best Super Bowl spot this year.

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