MHP turned to the All-Ukrainian Advertising Coalition for an expert opinion on the situation with the Vandog agency

“Vandog agency has publicly accused MHP of stealing the creative idea of the commercial. For MHP, adherence to the company's values, ethical principles and reputation are important, so in response to the accusations, we turned to the All-Ukrainian Advertising Coalition (AAC) for an expert opinion. 

The development of Ukrainian business, including the marketing and creative industry, is important to MHP. We respect the work of agencies and their intellectual property. We are ready to hear feedback, recognize our mistakes and improve internal processes. We are ready for an open and public dialog on any issues of cooperation and interaction.

To get an independent opinion on the situation with the Vandog agency, MHP turned to the UAC, which is the largest public association of the Ukrainian advertising industry. We are currently preparing all the documents related to this case and will hand them over to our colleagues from the TIC as soon as possible. According to Article 29 of the Law of Ukraine on Advertising, associations of citizens in the field of advertising, such as the ULC, have the right to conduct an independent examination of advertising and provide appropriate recommendations to advertisers, producers and distributors of advertising.

We expect that the ACC experts will give their independent opinion and recommendations. MHP is ready to accept and support the decision, whatever it may be, and act in accordance with the recommendations of the ACC.

We are convinced that such actions will be our contribution to the development of a civilized dialogue in the creative industry and will help all parties, including this case, to build effective cooperation in the future.

On October 25, Iryna Metneva, the founder of Vandog agency, published a post in which she publicly accused MHP of stealing the creative idea of the commercial. On the same day, the company conducted a detailed audit, which allowed it to draw conclusions and make important decisions for the future.

Let's start with the solutions. The reason for this situation was that we held a free tender for creative ideas. In the future, we have decided to completely abandon free tenders. From now on, we will pay for creative ideas of agencies, regardless of whether we take the idea into implementation. This practice will be a confirmation of our partnership respect for the work of agencies and their intellectual property.

While analyzing the situation, we restored the chronology of events.

In April, we launched a tender for the Nasha Ryaba advertising campaign. We invited eight agencies to participate in the tender, three of which were ready to participate in the tender on a pro bono basis. In addition to external agencies, an in-house creative team participated in the tender.

Most of the tender meetings were scheduled for May 13: 10:00 - in-house team, 11:00 - external agency, 15:00 - Vandog agency. Another agency made a presentation 2 days later.

At 10:00, the in-house team presented an idea similar to Vandog's. The date and time the presentation was created, as well as the date and time of the internal correspondence in which the presentation was sent, confirm that we received this idea before Vandog's idea, which we first saw at 3 p.m.

At 11:00, another external agency presented its idea, from which we chose a slogan and paid the agency for the right to use it.

In other words, our internal check unequivocally confirmed that the in-house team had indeed developed and first presented an idea that turned out to be similar to the Vandog team's. We suggested that if Irina had  doubts, she should show the correspondence and the presentation at the meeting, confirming the date and time of receipt of the idea.

As a company for which “Honesty and Openness” and “Responsibility” are corporate values, we recognize that not all of our actions in this situation were ethical and professional:

1. We did not notify the tenderers that an in-house creative team was participating in the tender, although we should have done so as a matter of priority. We apologize to all tenderers for this mistake.

2. The comments in the letter from our brand manager were incorrect, we chose a similar idea for testing and this should have been mentioned in the letter.

3. At the meeting, we didn't immediately tell our Vandog colleagues that we had a similar idea for an internal team

We are always ready to admit our mistakes where they are and are not afraid to do so publicly.

We regret that not all of our actions in relation to the tenderers in this situation were consistent with professional ethics. We have learned this lesson, and we will make every effort to ensure that our future interaction with agencies is as partnership-based as possible.

For the MHP team, the development of the marketing and creative industry is important, based on open dialogue and mutual respect,” MHP said in a statement.