I was watching the Lions butchering the Dolphins last night in the local domestic competition and during one of the breaks an ad came on for MTN Backyard Series. You can check it out by going to http://www.backyardseries.tv/ and clicking the Next button 3 times to get to the video page. You’ll want the one on the left of the page.
[Update] I made a quick vidcap from the site:
Basically it’s a person hitting a ball, and then throwing the bat off-screen. It then cuts to someone else catching a bat that has been thrown from off-screen, hitting a ball, and throwing it off-screen. Sounds horribly familiar.
Questions about originality aside, the only thing to ask then is, when will MTN Backyard Series be asking us to submit our clips to build a user generated Gmail MTN Backyard Series TV video?
Debating originality in advertising is a fical thing, I think Nike and Adidas both did very similar commercials a while ago where a soccer ball was kicked around the world before gmail.
The MTN Backyard Series Campaign seems to be following a more digital route so I don’t know about UGC for TVC, maybe for digital though..
We’ll think about it, thanks.