Hasta La Creative!

When we saw the beef industry’s new “Powerful Beefscapes” ads (left), they rang a bell. Then we remembered Nicolas Lampert’s “Meatscapes” (right), which we wrote about last May. The similarities are striking, with giant cuts of beef dominating meaty landscapes in both efforts. In our earlier piece, we even suggested (jokingly) that the beef council build a campaign around Lampert’s work. If that’s what happened, he wasn’t told about it. “I had not seen these ads until you brought them to my attention,” Lampert tells us in an e-mail, adding that, in his opinion, the ad work “borders very closely on plagiarism.” With Meatscapes, Lampert is commenting on the impact the meat industry has on the environment. Thus, he finds it odd that beef producers would embrace similar imagery. “What surprises me is why they would want to detail close-up shots of meat, as it has the potential to revolt the viewer,” he says. Read more about the campaign here.

—Posted by Tim Nudd