....and it isn't ethical, it's economic.
Every great ad campaign for a chip shop or a local micro-beer may represent millions of dollars of wasted economic potential. Any other business would see this as a scandalous waste.
Imagine for a moment that the man who invented the wheel had been able to patent it. But that his patent, for bizarre reasons, had restricted the item for use in small children's toys. Nothing larger. So no carts, no railways, no cars, no aircraft.
It's not quite such a fanciful notion. The Chinese invented gunpowder completely blind to its possible uses in weaponry. They made fireworks instead.
I always get reminded of this when trawling the walls of awards, especially in the print categories. Here and there you find a superb idea, which has been used to win an award for a local chip shop - but which could have been the basis of a worldwide campaign for, say, KFC.
Hence something which could have generated $100m of business has instead perhaps generated $5,000 - or, in the case of a true scam, nothing at all.
Moreover, because of the one golden rule in creative land (that you must never, ever be seen to use, adapt or borrow from another's idea) this means this particular idea can never be used for anything else again. Ever.
This is bad news for everyone. Not least for the team who created the ad, who have proudly exchanged a million dollar idea for a gold statuette and a 20% payrise. It's bad news for KFC, who never get to use the work. It's even bad news for the chip shop - who cannot enjoy a million dollar windfall from selling their idea to KFC.
But above all it's bad news for the idea - which never gets to enjoy its full potential. Any award-winning idea of this kind effectively becomes a kind of set-aside - a fenced-off acreage of creative ground on which nothing more can grow.
There are a few questions here.
One. We have obviously created a proxy for rewarding creative people where winning awards is more valuable than creating work of genuine economic value. Hence it matters not at all to a team whether their idea runs for a chip shop or for a global chain. Is this sensible?
Secondly, it seems to be assumed that anyone with a great idea must first lay claim to it by getting it to run in some form - for any brand that'll have it. The economic value of an idea to its creators seemingly lies only in laying claim to it, not in making use of it. Is this healthy?
Why not, for the week before Cannes, operate a great sales event where teams auction campaign ideas to agencies or brand owners? If the idea doesn't sell, then and only then fall back on Plan B and enter it for an award? Would this work?
If this sounds bizarre, remember this is how the film industry operates.
In the film industry - not an uncreative business generally - plagiarism is often seen as a virtue not a vice. Ideas are traded as often as they are commissioned. It is often brutally insensitive
to the feelings of creators. But there are sometimes advantages to this - not least that an idea gets more than one chance to be great.
