The Art of Stealing

Copywriters are at the heart of our business. The content they produce drives media whether it’s on ground, on air or on line. As such, the words they use to deliver their ideas can make or break a sale, divide or rule a mob, close or widen differences.

The art of stealing is not heard to master. All it takes is half a pound of grey matter and half a chance to get away with.

All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

The thinking person is often shocked to discover that their revolutionary new idea is actually not that new. More than likely, it had been thought thousands of years ago by someone. So try to familiarize yourself with the works of smarts people. In this way, you will never run out of inspiration and should steal their ideas; you will do so deftly, without having to seek refuge in the universal coincidence.

“Good artist borrow, great artists steal” (Pablo Picasso)

When Picasso stole this quote from T.S Eliot’s original, “Good poets borrow, great poets steal,” he helped to amplify its true meaning, as best explained by Eliot’s himself, Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal, bad poets deface and good poets make it into something better. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of felling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no consistency.

Copy from one, its plagiarism; copy from two, its research (Wilson Mizner)

Reading, learning and knowing everything about your area of expertise is a given. But it’s what you learn outside of your area of expertise that will make you great. Because that’s where the connection are made. That’s the work that happens when you take a break, move away, go on holiday or simple decide to actively vegetate. Stealing someone else’s work is neither appropriate nor justified as a mean to an end. However poets writer and copywriters can and do use others people’s writing as a base for their work.

You can steal a man’s bolts, but you can’t steal his thunder (Ed Zerne)

Fortunately, once you can see a connection that others do not, you can still cite your sources and speak in a truly new voice, because the new connection has power to make all the difference.

Different enough, surely, to inspire else to steal from you.