Copy, Copy, Copy

If I said that I had seen and read much of what is in Mark Earls’ new book: “Copy, Copy, Copy – How to do smarter marketing with other people’s ideas” in other places, he might take it as a compliment, while you, dear potential reader, might be put off picking it up and reading it for yourself.

The truth isn’t quite that simple and rather than putting you off I would, in fact, recommend you read it.

So while I have indeed read some of what Mark espouses elsewhere and have in my career regularly ‘stolen with pride’ (a phrase Mark somewhat surprisingly doesn’t use), that isn’t a reason not to read this book.

It is engagingly written, full of some great insights and enjoyable stories as well as providing ample suggestions for specific practical tools and techniques.

For me the real merit of the book is in the way it challenges some of the industry’s prevailing assumptions. Mark’s arguments for, and examples of, the benefits of copying is the best reason for reading the book.

He and his foreword writer, Walter Susini of Unilever, rightly suggest that as an industry we are fixated on originality and creative excellence, seeing them as some of the few ways left to create competitive advantage. “Copying”, “plagiarism”, “me-too”, “repetition”, “lifting”, “unoriginal” are all terms that are traditionally seen as negative and so should be avoided, if not shunned.

Mark’s counterargument is two-fold. Firstly he demonstrates how much of what we may have thought of as unique and original was really built on ‘copying’. Spoiler alert – Elvis fans - you may not like the way he deconstructs the King of Rock’n’Roll to show that he was “a big fat copycat”.

Secondly he uses a number of examples to show how copying, especially from afar, (other categories) can lead to breakthroughs and innovation in another category.

His notion of the “Tyranny of the singular” and marketers’ love of it is a powerful concept too. He highlights how much the industry loves the idea of the new and, in particular, how “we like to treat each … problem or challenge as unique – as unlike anything that we have faced before – one which demands a unique and singular solution.”

He champions exploring multiple right answers, a philosophy I share. For too long too many issues have been considered binary – there is a right and a wrong answer, things are black or white. The truth we don’t live in black or white world, we live and have to deal with a world full of the shades of grey and indeed all of the colours of the rainbow.

His ‘what kinda’ sorting box and his 50 strategies are useful if you haven’t seen them before – for me they felt a bit too much like what Mark calls “tight” copying – straight copying without adding anything.

This leads me to the one quibble I have with the book. Much of what Mark is advocating isn’t really copying, it’s “copying plus”. He calls it ‘loose’ copying but it’s actually taking an existing idea or concept from somewhere (copying it) but then building it in some way or adding it to something else again. It’s not straight copying, nor is it creating something completely new, it’s something different something in-between the two. So calling it “copying” may help Mark’s argument and positioning of his book, but it is for me a fudge.

Many years ago, Paul Walton founder of The Value Engineers introduced me to the concept of the 3Ts of Innovation. It divided innovation into tweaks, twists and twinkles. Tweaks were minor on-going upgrades, new flavours, new varieties, etc. Twinkles are the breakthrough innovations, the inventions that are game –changers. They are few and far between. Twists are the clever re-arrangements of what already exists, new combinations or builds on what exists elsewhere, so for me Mark’s book, or at least half of it, could be called ‘Let’s twist again’.

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Read more from Giles Lury is Executive Chairman of The Value Engineers. Read more from him in our Clubhouse.