“It’s been done.”

There’s a billboard in Times Square which does something cool. Read about it here for the brand Forever 21 done by Space150. It is very cool. There’s a project from last year in London by designer Chris O’ Shea called Hand From Above. It’s cool too. I won’t cover the backgrounds of each project; that’s why I gave you links. However, it raised another point we brought up on the latest AdVerve about copycats. After seeing this, one side can argue that Forever 21’s takes the idea further while the other might say not far enough. Wherever you come out isn’t the point. What I’m coming to now as my *happy* place is the idea that there are no new ideas, just new executions we haven’t seen yet. Old news, yah? But the 2010 1.0 update to that vibe I would like to see more of is simply a nod to what came before. Especially from brands. It diffuses a lot of bad will and is probably a pretty karmatic thing to do in the long run, no? I mean, it’s hard to be angry at someone who says “I love what you did—check out what we did with it.”