It’s been over a week now since mall food court staple Jamba Juice was accused of thieving the designs from artist David Rees’ Get Your War On comic for a campaign called “Summer Bliss,” which has been anything but for the company.
While Rees himself has been taking the creative executions of JJ’s ad agency Neighbor a bit lightly, he’s nevertheless cultivated plenty of supporters who have held mock prayer vigils at Jamba HQ while creating the slogan “No Justice, No Juice.”
After skirting the issue thus far, the corporate folks at JJ have finally released a by-the-numbers statement, some of which reads:
“We understand there has been some misunderstanding about the Summer Bliss campaign artwork and the comic strip created by David Rees due to the use of these clip art images. Jamba Juice would like to expressly communicate that the Summer Bliss promotion was not intended to imply any affiliation with Mr. Rees, Mr. Rees’ endorsement of Jamba Juice and its products, or Jamba Juice’s endorsement of Mr. Rees’ work.”
Rees, who says he is “disapppointed” that Jamba Juice didn’t endorse his work, offers his own snarky revision of the statement here. The two main issues clashing here are an agency failing to give credit where credit is due and public domain. While Jamba Juice says they pulled clip-art for the advertising, the artist waxes didactic with a compare/contrast analysis of both pieces (example above), sparing no punch in the process with comments including:
“They totally bit my word-balloon style. And, yes, I may sound like a complete maniac saying this, but: I was proud of my GYWO balloon style! Are you kidding? Rounded-edge rectangle with single line going to the character’s mouth? That looked totally fresh! I pushed Quark XPress 4 to its very limits developing that word balloon style!”
Via BoingBoing and Fast Company
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