Gillian Wearing, the winner of this year’s Turner Prize, has
accused BMP DDB of using her award-winning idea in the pounds 8 million
advertising campaign for the launch of the new Volkswagen Golf.
The campaign features various characters holding up boards with messages
written on them which are in complete contrast to the image of the
person holding them. A macho bouncer outside a nightclub holds a board
saying ’sensitive’ and a middle-aged male commuter’s sign says ’at
weekends my name is Mandy’. The campaign endline reads: ’Sometimes what
you see isn’t all you get.’
Wearing created a similar project, called Signs, in which she invited
people in the street to write down their thoughts on paper and took
photographs of them holding up their own messages, with the same
contradictory results.
A spokesman for Interim Art, Wearing’s agent, said a letter had been
drawn up by her lawyers.
James Best, the chairman of BMP, said: ’I’m sure there’s nothing in
it.
Ideas come from everywhere.’
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