Mexico Snickers ad appears to be a fairly blatant ripoff

A (new) friend of Murketing passes along an interesting example of the, uh, inspiration for a TV commercial from a big agency. It’s a Snickers ad that ran, as I understand it, in Mexico.

Here is the opening sequence of the 2007 skateboarding video Fully Flared, which features skaters doing various stunts amid concrete ruins — made remarkable by various explosions that occur during and just after said stunts. If you’re into that sort of thing, it’s pretty impressive. I gather Ty Evans and Spike Jonze were the principle filmmakers.

Here is the Snickers ad, as posted a few days ago on The Berrics. It features skaters doing various stunts amid concrete ruins — made remarkable by various explosions that occur during and just after said stunts.

You get the idea: Very similar. (Though in the latter, the skaters eat some Snickers bars.)

The Berrics also posts this Smoking Gun-like document which appears to be the pitch & storyboarding for the ad. The agency is BBDO. In case you’re curious what The Berrics’ view is of this, the ad is referred to on their site as “The BBDO Attrocity.”

Perhaps there is more to the story? If not, it does appear pretty blatant and shameless.