Back in December I was invited to give a lecture on the Design Process to full-time students studying a MA in Public Relations. During the lecture I invited the students to ask me questions.
One of the inquiries was whether, as a client you should “hire a professional designer?” As you would expect my response was “Of course, you should always hire a professional as you will get better results of a higher quality and you minimise the risk of something going pear shaped!”
Here in Ireland, we recently had the latest season of the Apprentice aired on TV3. During this season, one of the product placements was Cadbury chocolate. This season of the apprentice saw Cadbury Ireland run a design competition offering a €10,000 prize for the winning entry. The competition was open to the public and the purpose of which was to source a new wrapper design for the iconic Dairy Milk bar.
The competition was organised by advertising agency Ogilvy and judging of the contest was web-based through Cadbury’s Facebook page, after which the entries where narrowed down to a final 5 and the public could vote for their favourite entry.
Sounds fine, well, the winning entry was chosen by the public vote had an uncanny remembrance to a work of Fantasy Art available on the internet.
Cadbury’s Twitter account and Facebook page were flooded with complaints and accusations of plagiarism, no doubt causing embarrassment for all involved, including winning entrant, a Leaving Certificate student, who subsequently deactivated her Facebook account.
Judge for your self, the winning entry and fantasy art below.
Cadbury were quick to respond, by acknowledging the complaints and promptly chose a new winning entry.
The argument here is there that this situation highlights the failures in producing speculative design work, crowdsourcing and a lack of understanding of the value that design can bring to a brand. It also highlights the pitfalls in hiring an amateur to do a professional’s job and undermines the role of the professional design consultant in producing effective work for our clients.
But my thoughts are with Sinead, who in fairness does acknowledge on her entry “It’s recognisable yet unique and the optical illusion is pretty cool!”.
Not only is this a public relations disaster of one of the biggest confectionery brands in Ireland, but they also have exposed a private individual to unnecessary scrutiny.
So, back to the lecture. I would amend my response to the student, in return, by asking, “Would you risk the reputation of your client or client’s brand by hiring a someone who was not a professional designer?”
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The Logo Factory
Benjamin Royce
