The way to get the originality we seek . . . might be through the simple – and very human – act of copying.

In marketing today, we place a much higher price on originality and creative excellence than ever before.

We love it.

We L O V E it.

When we have it, we want more.

When we don't, we scream and scream for it.

Because we know that this is one of the few remaining ways to create competitive advantage.

Which is why you're as likely to bump into a marketing person as an art director at the ad industry's get-togethers like the Cannes Festival. They want to know what the creative people do and how.

It's also why corporations pay people like me – poacher turned gamekeeper – to help them and their partners do better work.

And why ‘derivative' or ‘unoriginal' are one of the worst things you can say in modern marketing.

But we still don't know how to get ‘original' ideas.

We don't always get the way the best new ideas and new strategies are created.

We'd like to pretend that it all happens in a deductive, predictable and repeatable way (like our manufacturing processes) but deep down, we know that it doesn't.

Equally we've long been told by those who define themselves as ‘creative people' that there's something magical about having new ideas – that new things come out in a rush, a moment of inspiration, a rush of blood or a visitation from some muse or other.

But equally we know this isn't true, either. At least for most of the time.

So this book opens up a new and controversial possibility.

Because it shows us that the way to get the originality we want, isn't through straining and straining and praying and hoping for that shiny new thing to drop out of the sky.

But rather through the simple – and very human – act of copying.

In this book, Mark proposes that we learn to copy well (by which he means badly): loosely rather than tightly, from far away rather than from our immediate competitors.

Copying, he demonstrates, is paradoxically the best way to make things new and fresh and original.

If only you learn to copy well (badly, that is).

Not only does he give us the tools to copy well, a really simple set of questions to ask but a huge archive of things to copy (all neatly sorted into the types of behaviour we're trying to change or encourage).

I've long been a big fan of Mark's work – Creative Age, HERD and I'll Have What She's Having. They all changed the way I think about marketing, communication and how people really do what they do (as opposed to how we've been told they do).

Copy Copy Copy is different and more practical: it takes these ideas on and – enlightened by Mark's own experience – shows you how to put them to work.

Steal it.
Steal it all.
I know he'd want you to.

Walter Susini
GLOBAL VP CREATIVE STRATEGY CONTENT AND DESIGN