Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
You know your style must be tasty when everyone keeps trying to bite it. This new advertisement for Johnnie Walker whisky which has recently festooned Union station is clearly attempting to ally its product with our fair city by blatantly ripping off the Torontoist logo.
Oh, sure. The buildings are in a different order and they use the Skydome instead of a streetcar and they throw in the outline of what I assume is meant to be the ROM's soon-to-be-completed Libeskind reno to punch up the au courant factor, but the silhouettes of the CN Tower, City Hall and OCAD all seem suspiciously similar to our own skyline insignia.
The Torontoist staff decided that I was uniquely qualified to write this particular post, having spent a lifetime facing similar problems of identity theft with this selfsame organisation. Apparently, it wasn't quite enough to be the cause for endless questions like "Did your parents name you that because they're alcoholics?" or "Hey! Do you know that you're Johnnie Walker Red?" - now they also have to purloin my Torontoist's logo to hock their booze. Well, I say enough is enough. Cease your purloinery, my eponymous liquor-smiths! Let's just hope that dude with the cane sticks to the direction he appears to be moving in - away from Hogtown - and maybe follows his own advice. Just keep walking.
Photo courtesy of Ron Nurwisah.
UPDATE: A big thanks to all our readers for demonstrating that commenting on a blog is certainly not the sincerest form of flattery. This silly little controversy has even reached Leo Burnett Canada, the ad agency behind this campaign. You can check out their good-natured response on their blog.
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So what is the story behind your name? Are you legally "Johnnie" or are you "John" or "Johnathan"? Did your parents take your hair colour into consideration when naming you? And does either your name or that of the liquor company have anything to do with the song "The Letter That Johnny Walker Read" by Asleep At The Wheel (of which I wasn't aware until I played Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas)? I can't be the only person who's spent years wondering these things.
And, heh, the silhouette of the ROM crystal reminds me of Sonic the Hedgehog.
so can you actually do anything about this? don't you as an artist own that image? i think it's too uncanny to be a mere coincidence.
It's a SKYLINE. Skyline's are one of the most cliched symbols for any city.
What's next - are you going to accuse me of copying you? My old blog had a silhoutted skyline on it since 2002. Does that mean I should be angered or flattered that Torontoist copied me?
Get over yourselves already! Save your complaints for when your own actually creative ideas are stolen.
Chill out, Jerrold. Thanks.
it's a slooooooow news day at torontoist. that's monday for you, home to "special" features and "lifestyles" features. but hey, johnnie, more power to you. stick it to the man.
They definitely ripped off your skyline!
That said, they didn't just copy your image to save a buck, they executed their own expression of your idea. It's on the borderline of copyright infringement but my guess is that it isn't. Besides, nobody is the worse off.
I say enjoy the flattery! Which seems like what you're doing. Carry on.
I guess it's a matter of interpretation. I don't think this is anything close to the Torontoist logo. The similarities stop at it being a silhouette of Toronto's skyline. I've seen variations on this idea dozens of times.
This is my first experience with snippy comments, so bear with me. I think what makes this ad seem rip off-ish is the juxtaposition of the CN Tower, City Hall and OCAD in the skyline. Unlike Jerrold's blog example, these buildings don't actually form a skyline - they aren't even to scale! - but are a collection meant to represent some of the most iconic aspects of the Toronto cityscape. To use the CN Tower is nothing, everyone does this when they talk about Toronto. To include City Hall as well could just be a coincidence. But OCAD? A relatively recent and oft-reviled piece of architecture. It's just a much less obvious choice and that, for me, is what makes it stand out as "borrowed".
If I seem at all over-zealous in this post, it is merely because of my own personal association with the company in question. A lifetime of people saying "What's your name again? Jack Daniels? Jim Beam? Bombay Sapphire?" is enough to make anyone tetchy.
when i heard the description i was a little skeptical, but now that i've seen the photo it's totally undeniable!
the thing that really clinches it for me is: why would anybody ever include OCAD?
don't you have something more to write about??? the skyline is used everywhere, I guess the all the toronto gift shops down on yonge street are all 'copying' you......
The Perez thing was clearly biting, but this is a wild stretch on a slow Monday.
The OCAD, people. The OCAD.
You guys actually think the liquor company copied the poster design from your site? You're only kidding yourselves.
I can't tell what I think, and I wouldn't be surprised if it went either way. Gothamist has had the whole "selected landmarks as a logo" thing going for a few years (not a skyline), but it's not as if nobody's thought of the idea before.
But yeah, why did we include OCAD?
The other images I've figured out, but I'm scratching my head as to why they've included the cooling plant at the Pickering Nuclear Station there . . . see . . . the outlined image in the middle . . .
Sorry, David. I just think you guys need a serious ego check once in a while. "Torontoist is a website about Toronto and everything that happens in it" not a website about itself. Or is it?
As for "the most iconic aspects of the Toronto cityscape," the streetcar totally kicks the Dome - oops, I mean the "Roger's Centre's" ass. That is all.
Don't apologize. Say it: SkyDome. It's the SkyDome. It will always be the SkyDome.
even the curvature of city hall is suspect. look at it!
If the argument against including OCAD is that it's a recent and "oft-reviled" building, then what about the ROM? It's definitely not as ridiculed, but I think a fair number of people don't think much of it, and it's not even finished.
What should they have replaced OCAD with in their collection of landmarks (as JW does keep pointing out, it's not a skyline!)? I think they just wanted to stick to strict outlines, which would've been too difficult with a streetcar. Toronto doesn't have that many distinctively shaped landmarks.
well, looking at the two again, it's kinda obvious that the same idea occurred to the designers. copied? i dunno. but let's be clear about this, Torontoist's is BETTER. ok? ok.
This is a GLOBAL campaign from JW, and a damn good one if you ask me. I think the fact that they customized it for Toronto is really cool and that its purely coincidence that the Toronto landmarks look similar to Torontoist. That's why their landmarks - they're iconic.
Plus its a cool brand of BOOZE which I think Torontoist could use a shot of now and then.
Cheers!
D
I thought this post was supposed to somewhat be in jest...I'm surprised that everyone's taking it so seriously.
I, for one, am just happy that it's not a post about Jack Daniels, or I'd be hurling all over the place. Never trust the Jack...especially a whole mickey of it at once when supporting your best friend's breakup in university. Ahem.
Sheesh. Get over yourselves! As someone said earlier it's a worldwide campaign and I think it's more likely they're riffing on La Linea, the italian cartoon from the 1970's...
Alright then, if it's a global campaign, I guess they're ripping off the Gothamist network as a whole, then. But we'd have to see the other regional posters.
Frankly, to me, that makes it seem even more suspicious.
Oh my! I thought we were living in an age where folks were more savvy to this type of apropriation. Yikes. Some of you sound like you have never seen an ad before. For the most part the majority of ads come from one borrowed idea or another.
For those of you crying "so can you actually do anything about this? don't you as an artist own that image?" - I am looking at you Ashley WB; Architecture is also the property of someone, for the most part namely the Architect - or the owners (CN, City of TO etc.) So before you start sling stones at JW think about the fact that the OCAD building is very recognizable as such (as is City hall, CN tower) and if anything Alsop (or Revell or Andrews) would have equal right to take action - both against the TO-ist and JW for their uses of its likeness. The difference is JW would have gotten permission where as I am sure TO-ist didn't. (DT - please feel free to correct me if wrong)
Hey, as the post header mentions TO-ist is flattered. They should be, their logo is great. But please oh please do not call it an original.
Has anyone noticed the wonderful irony in that ad...
- the idea of 'walking the line' [a cliché test for sobriety] in a booze ad...
- and using "keep walking" in a tourism theme ... reminds me of when people try to avoid something, like an unpleasant person or thing... "just keep walking, dear... maybe they won't see us...", implying that drinking JW will help you avoid the tourist traps of Toronto... Which is true, really.
"blatantly ripping off the Torontoist logo"
Are you kidding? Do you live in a cave?
The use of parts of a city skyline in ads or logos is an old, old, old, old, old - and tired - idea that has been used a bazillion times the world over. It's completely ludicrous of you to claim ownership of it.
2 minutes of searching would have revealed the ads are part of a global campaign from Bartle Bogle Hegarty. Which office started the campaign, I don't know, but they're making JW ads with the line in every BBH office in every corner of the planet.
The campaign idea is much bigger than the simple use of a skyline to regionalize an execution. In fact, the regional cityscape executions are the weakest ones in the campaign.
Some U.S. JW executions:
http://www.bartleboglehegarty.com/Templates/ShowClients.aspx?regionId=3&historic=0&ClientId=34
And please, don't flatter yourselves thinking BBH saw the Torontoist/Gothamist logo and a lightbulb went off. The creative team had to regionalize the campaign and having the JW guy walking on a line past the outline of the city in question is a clear, obvious solution - not a great one, but a solution that fits in the campaign.
So, uhh, no - Torontoist isn'tt the victim of some "suspicious" shenanigans. It's the victim of having a tastily put together but very unoriginal logo.
ho ho ho let's move on...
Dave R is correct that the original work for the campaign was done by BBH. Local work is handled by Leo Burnett Toronto. I've posted something about this whole to-do on our blog:
http://lbtoronto.typepad.com/lbto/2006/12/now_weve_done_i.html
I seriously encourage everyone to check out the link that Michael Takasaki has provided - I've updated this post to include it. If someone makes a humorous post, why not respond to it with a sense of humour?
Also, some responses were clearly written by the same person using different names (not to mention referencing the Linea Man which had already been discussed in an earlier comment) and so I have removed them. Please, don't comment more than once under different names, it's just rude. And if you must, try not using verbatim phrases from your other comments, it's a bit of a give-away.
I'm surprised that nobody mentioned how your logo ripped off the opening credits of Frasier.
Sorry. I think that most of you missed the point entirely. The above sequence of obstacles that only appear to resemble local buildings is actually a depiction of the final challenge on Sunday's last episode of 'Survivor'. For those who had the misfortune to miss it, the contestants used the urinal on the left as a step-up onto the tower on which they had to perch for an hour. If they managed to stay on and weren't bleeding too profusely, they then jumped on a Tim's mega muffin which propelled them onto the balance beam which they crossed in order to jump over the final obstacle, the bale of razor wire.
As well, 'Johnnie Walker' only refers to the brand of ambulatory assistive device they were playing for, while 'Keep Walking' is something they hoped to achieve once they finished.
People sure are taking a post that was clearly a tongue-in-cheek observation a little too seriously.
Yeah, i saw it as a tongue in cheek commentary as well....one has to admit how similar the logos are to one another, and cool that correspondence was made in good humour with the advert company. Although the line "blatantly" ripped off seems to be what sets a few people off...props to both on the cool stencil logo.
oh...and La Linea rules. that link brought a smile to my mug.
I took it seriously when JW posted a comment that seemed pretty straight-faced. Maybe he should've just kept up the tongue-in-cheek repartee.
To end this debate: Yes. My post was meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I, for one, would have a hard time taking anything gravely serious that contained the phrase "Cease your purloinery, my eponymous liquor-smiths!" Maybe that's just me. And if you look, I think you'll find at least a grain of humour in all of my comments, except perhaps the one relating to people posting the same comments under multiple aliases. Cause that's just evil.