A LOCAL advertising agency head has apologised after being accused of plagiarism.
Peter Grange (pictured), managing director of Offshore International, submitted an article for this month’s Chamber of Commerce Contact magazine in which he discusses the current economic climate and gives advice on how the creative industry can cope in a recession.
But he has been accused of copying an article written by top UK advertising agency boss Nigel Bogle, which was published in creative industry magazine Campaign in January.
In his article, Mr Bogle, who founded the international firm Bartle Bogle Hegarty advertising agency 26 years ago, gave his views on what agencies needed to do in order to survive the economic gloom.
But many of the BBH chairman’s ideas and opinions appear word-for-word for much in Mr Grange’s article and are apparently presented as original thoughts.
Well over half of the article in Contact is identical to the Campaign original.
Asked for an explanation, Mr Grange, who has written an email apologising to the editor of Contact, yesterday said that he had instructed an employee to write the article for him.
It had been an oversight on his part that Mr Bogle’s views had not been properly attributed.
He said the employee had been directed to a range of relevant industry articles to use for inspiration.
‘While they were certainly included to help underline our own original thoughts and commentary, they were not highlighted as direct quotes in a very clearly italicised way as we would usually do,’ he said.
Mr Grange added that the incident was ‘certainly not a deliberate attempt to plagiarise or lift someone else’s work. Why would we?’.
The PR department for BBH reacted with amazement yesterday when forwarded a copy of the article.
Mr Bogle said: ‘I read the article with great interest, and I couldn’t agree with it more.’
John Tylee, associate editor of Campaign magazine, agreed that the articles were incredibly similar.
‘Imitation is a form of flattery,’ he said. ‘It’s very amusing.’
Mr Tylee said that Campaign would not be taking legal action.
Chamber director Barry Cash was taken aback.
‘I’m surprised,’ he said. ‘Obviously, I did not know this article had been plagiarised. There is nothing else I can say. When you ask someone to supply something there is an assumption that it will be their work.’
Contact magazine editor Jon Taylor defended Mr Grange, saying it had been an honest mistake.
‘The only reason this problem has occurred is because he forgot to supply me with an editor’s note saying chunks had been used from Nigel Bogle’s article,’ he said.
‘I do not think Pete has done this with any kind of malice.’
* Mr Bogle’s original article can be found at tinyurl.com/cqz7zh.
Article posted on 6th March, 2009 - 2.29pm
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