I stumbled across this ad on Facebook and was amazed that a competitor would copy our ad so closely; The video opens on the city building, a horse charges out into the fog-of-war, a monster kills the horse and simultaneously destroys the avatar, proceeds to destroy a freshly built catapult, attacks the wall, and then succumbs to an onslaught of arrows, etc... As odd as this whole copying episode is, in a way I am flattered that they went through the trouble. To recreate each plot point is a considerable amount of work. This was not an isolated occurrence; several other ads I worked on were copied in a similar way. See below for another example:
This was the original customize-hero spot that I put together. A few months later, this video was also copied. The concept of a scantily clad woman being dressed with armor might not seem so unique at first glance. However, when you consider that we have a 2D character getting dressed, transforming into a 3D version of herself, reaching back, grabbing a weapon, and then hitting the cursor away- it starts to get very specific. See the knockoff version below:
Both of these knock-offs are from the same game. It is amusing that they went as far as to copy the exact sequence of events and recreate some very unique moments. I would be curious to know how common this is.