Commentary

Agency Accused of Plagiarism Reaches Out to Design Student They Plagiarized

In a Reddit post Tuesday, UK design student Tom Anders Watkins claimed Kuala Lampur-based agency Dentsu Utama took, perhaps, a few too many liberties with a recent design of his. Watkins had done some design work featuring animals and circles. Very similar designs showed up in a campaign Dentsu Utama created for the World Wildlife Fund. The campaign in question recently earned a Silver for outdoor at the Malaysian Kancil Awards.

The agency is attempting to contact Watkins and Dentsu Utama CEO Omar Shaari told Malay Mail Online, "As an agency which is part of a larger global network, Dentsu Utama maintains very strict policies around the use of third party content in our creative materials and treats allegations of intellectual property infringement extremely seriously. We understand that Tom has sent us an email but unfortunately we have not been able to locate it. We are in the midst of finding ways of establishing contact with Tom Anders to address this issue at hand.”

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In addition to the Reddit post, Watkins tweeted , “Hey, @dentsuaegis @WWF I think you may have blatantly copied my design in your award winning poster.” The tweet has over 1,100 retweets and 870 likes. 

You can check out a comparison of the ads here.

Ahem, Dentsu Utama, all you have to do to make contact with Tom is tweet him. You have heard of Twitter, right?

1 comment about "Agency Accused of Plagiarism Reaches Out to Design Student They Plagiarized".
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  1. Jeff Domansky from Peak Communications Inc, December 31, 2015 at 8:08 p.m.

    No excuse for plagiarism by anyone. Thanks for calling out Dentsu Utama for this egregious steal!

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