Some ad exec is due for a whipping.

I’ve seen new TV spots today, during NFL broadcasts, for both Internet-based telephone service provider Vonage and for carmaker Chevrolet. Both spots use the exact same background music, a jittery pop ballad with nonsensical lyrics “do-do, do-do-do / do-do, do-do-do” sung in a high-pitched voice. The song currently might be on the pop singles charts; if so, I haven’t heard it anywhere else yet.

I’m curious how this came about. Vonage is just starting to run commercials, having tapped Arnold Worldwide as its agency of record. I don’t know if Arnold does any work for Chevy — I doubt it. It could be an innocent coincidence. Given that the two companies are in such drastically different businesses, I don’t see how either side could claim any big damage from this copying effort.

Still, this is another instance of what seems to be a particularly rampant amount of imitation within the adveristing of late. The cases with NetZero-AOL and Bud Light-Miller Lite were well-documented and seen as calculated, with dubious benefit; but those involved actual rivals in the same business. Beyond those, the more subtle co-opting of Old Navy holiday carollers spots by Honda, and of the Lexus holiday ads by rival carmaker Jaguar, point to an awful lot of insular groupthink within the ad industry. Is this the natural result of all the consolidation into super-agencies over the past several years?