Now, it probably wasn’t too clever, but we’ve hardly told the world about, just our closest digital agency friends in Manchester (well “supposed friends” in your case Fluid! Cheeky! ). Yeah, alright, no excuse, but there’s no commercial gain from this. Just a little bit of banter with our Manchester partners.

Merry Christmas all the same from the CTI team! (bit late now!)

The picture in question is not only stylistically very similar but in the exact same pose. Charges of plagiarism are pretty hard to deny. I think the point more up for debate is one of culpability – should responsibility to make sure the work is original lie with Paperchase or the Gather No Moss, agency they got the work from?

Sadly this is only one of many incidents of a large company stealing from an independent artist, Topshop for one are notorious for pinching the work of others.

The strength of feeling and size of reaction online was almost frightening when you consider that at that point – when I contacted them – Paperchase had made no statement and people only had @hiddeneloise's blog post and the matching artwork to judge an opinion on.

By the time they had made their side of the story clear, it was way too late for them, for example a Google search on Paperchase (http://www.google.com/search?q=paperchase) already showed @hiddeneloise's blog post in 6th position.

It turns out that they weren't really the ones in the wrong when it came to the initial licensing of the artwork, but they certainly took the full force of Twitter mob.

This is a good example of how many people (including myself) on occasion still take what they read as fact and even act upon it.

The only defence for any company in this situation appears to be a quick response and an already active and popular social media presence.

The Berocca ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVwJl0oiRC4

The original, Ok Go music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI&feat...

Honestly, whoever did this for Berocca should be fired for producing such a terribly executed rip off.

It wasn't much of an apology really. They've tried to keep their customers sweet in the hopes of them returning but its the artist who needs the apology from them. I found these statements from Paperchase yesterday very snippy and disrespectful.

It is very clear they've ripped off the artist with a poor imitation and they just need to hold their hands up and admit fault this time. They'd come off a lot better with people if they just did that rather than getting on the defensive/trying to pass the blame onto others.