As someone who enjoys uploading sketches to YouTube, I forget how easy it is for others to “draw inspiration” from something which may have taken you a lot of time and effort to create.

Haribo did it with their Star Mix ad in 2008: which is incredibly similar to the sequel of Will Ferrell’s Landlord sketch, Good Cop, Baby Cop and this Berocca ad just happened to pop up shortly after OK-Go found world-wide fame with their treadmill music clip. But we tend to let these things go because we like to think that perhaps the big multi-national company offered the “victim” a lovely suitcase full of notes, so we can continue to eat our sweets and consume our energy drinks without feeling guilty.

However, this is not always the case.

Here is Beardyman (a.k.a. Darren Foreman), an already popular British musician and beatboxer who found further fame with this clip:

And here is the new McVitie’s ad for their Medley bars:

Beardyman was originally approached by McVitie’s to do this ad. He didn’t like the script and when they refused to change it, he turned it down. However, they still went ahead with the ad, hiring new beatboxers, and then said they didn’t need to pay him because they apparently had the idea before they saw his video.

That’s right. They had the idea before they saw his video. Which means that they just happened to approach a guy who just happened to do a beatboxing-kitchen video 4 years ago, which has since had over 4 million views and their ad just happened to have the same concept.

If you think Beardyman deserves some sort of compensation for this blatant rip-off, please reblog this, or tweet about it. My friend and fellow comic, Adam Tempest, gave it the name “HobRobs” so I suggest you use this when tweeting: #HobRobs

I would be heartbroken if someone ripped off my ad idea (*cough* shameless plug *cough*) and think it’s shameful that large companies think they can get away with this, so please show your support so we can maybe make some sort of difference. Or at least get Beardyman a lifetime’s supply of HobNobs.