An screen shot from the YouTube Ad Blitz video promo. The image on the computer screen that serves as this player’s head was “borrowed” from The Unforgettable Buzz.

The image that YouTube “borrowed” from us. We posted it back on The Buzz web site in September of 2012.

Electric Football was seemingly rediscovered by numerous ad agencies in 2013. From RGIII and Subway, to McDonalds, to Chick-fil-A, to ESPN, and finally Google, with their YouTube Ad Blitz video promo.

Without a doubt the YouTube Ad is clever. The concept of having each Electric Football player be an actual advertiser showing off their product is creative and catches your attention. Even using the well-worn Electric Football cliche of spinning players, the ad works. Definitely worth a watch and a chuckle.

And our eagle-eyed designer Michael Kronenberg discovered something else that YouTube did. They “borrowed” one of our photos. Appearing at 1:23 is a player with a computer screen as his head. The image on the screen is a photo we posted on the Buzz site back in September of 2012. As you can see, we even posted it with a copyright symbol and a Buzz watermark.   

So….guess we should feel flattered that YouTube thought one of our photos was good enough to use in their Ad Blitz advertising.  But part of us can’t help but feel taken advantage of because it was done without our permission – and YouTube, as we all know, has a pretty thorough understanding of copyright law. It comes down to this…all they had to do was ask.

Earl & Roddy 

Side by side comparison