3M Rips Viral Marketting Idea from Scott Ableman

Scott Ableman, an amateur photographer, documented a quirky and clever prank on a co-workers esteemed Jaguar parked in the company parking lot, whereby workers covered the car in post-it notes. After gaining much attention, including coverage from ABC News and Yahoo, 3M seemed to have gained notice of it roughly a year later.

What follows is a sleazy attempt by 3M's marketting division to steal Mr. Ableman and his co-workers idea and to appropriate their prank as a viral marketting attempt for 3M Post it Notes. Having initialy asked his permission for the rights to use the image, Ableman quoted his price - to which 3M marketting manager scoffed and remarked that the entire feat could be recreated for much less and offered to pay the severely reduced amount. Ableman re-offered a new slightly lowered amount, to which he heard no response from. Months later, Ableman was contacted by a user and congratulated on having seen a picture of his work in a retail department store.

It turns out 3M literally stole the idea, recreated with the budget they had mentioned earlier, and begun advertising it across several department stores. Not only did they outright steal the idea, and make no attempts to hide it from the author. But they tried to make their forged attempt resemble as closely as possible to the original prank - they literally copied all the decorations verbatim.

Here's Scott Ableman's attempt:

Original prank by Scott Ableman

And here's the attempt by 3M:

3Ms copy of the Prank

As you can tell 3M has made a deliberate attempt to maintain a similar style, and color scheme. They could have covered the entire car in post-it notes, or used an entire rainbow spectrum of colors to use in designing the car, or even a huge assortment of patterns to style the car in. But they chose an almost exact replica of the style, right down to the dotted windows. This is one of the cases of major corporate theft. 3M should not only be ashamed but boycotted where possible for such flagrant disregard for stealing someone else's creativity.

DepositFiles Steals from Rapidshare

Rapidshare is the largest file sharing service, with more files and traffic being shared through it then any other site on the web. They are amongst the first successful sites to carve up an audience in this industry and still manage to survive, where others had encountered difficulty. With that said, it's understandable that many sites have sprung up trying to fill the gaps and voids that Rapidshare is unable to extend itself to.

However, one such site Depositfiles has taken the opportunity to create a very similar service based very obviously around RapidShare's premium and free user system. Of main importance to note is that Rapidshare recently changed the interface of their site so that when a user visits the download page they are shown a screen asking them whether they wish to download as a free user (which has limits) or unfettered as a premium user (no limits, but requires payment).

To indicate the difference between the two, Rapidshare had created and displayed two images depicting the speed odometer of a car, the free odometer is slowly bobbing towards the slower speed, while the premium odometer is quickly bobbing between the fastest speeds. Below is a screenshot of Rapidshare's interface set up:

Figure 1 - Rapidshare Download Interface

Notice the overall structure of the page, free user on the left side and premium on the right and the usage of odometers and buttons as opposed to just a link. Now take a look at DepositFile, which has an uncanny resemblance (to say the least).

Figure 2 - DepositFiles Downloader Interface clearly copied from RapidShare

DepositFiles download interface is nearly identical, except for the colour scheme, and the fact that the images are different. The odometers are animated as well, and on the following download page after having select 'free' or 'gold' (aka premium) mode, DepositFile features an almost identical download page featuring a countdown timer, which Rapidshare had previously used to start downloads.

Overall it's quite obvious that DepositFiles is devoid of creativity and instead relies on the design and structuring of Rapidshare to come up with features and presentation for its site. The similarities between the sites don't end there, but there is no need in going through a full list of site-by-site comparisions as its very clear that this is an industry where creativity doesn't stretch too far and that most of those involved in this sector are jumping on the bandwagon with the belief that outright copying will lead to easy riches.