Do ideas for good really need to be original?
We live in an industry that worships originality. Agencies pitch, brainstorm, create. Always in search of the “new”. But what if the world doesn’t always need a new idea? What if it needs the right idea, one that already worked? That’s the premise behind unoriginal.work, the new social-good platform launched by Raiffeisen Bank Romania and MullenLowe Romania. And frankly, we shouldn’t turn a blind eye to something this good.
Recycling Good, Not Just Ads
I often joke about “copycats”, hunting campaigns that look eerily familiar, calling out lazy creatives or rip-off culture.
But unOriginal flips that logic: instead of shame, it offers a hand-up.
NGOs around the world face the same old struggle: problem > campaign > most of the time, only limited impact. unOriginal gives them a library of proven campaigns, ready to be adapte. No need for reinventing the wheel, just repurpose what already works. Efficiency becomes the new form of originality.
Collaboration Over Competition
With unOriginal, the brief is simple: share what worked. Upload your case. Let others download it, adapt it, do good. That’s right! A campaign that moved people in one city could do it again in another. Or shine light on a cause half a world away. That’s the kind of ripple effect that matters. Imagine a campaign like MagicHOME, that raised over 1 million EURO for children diagnosed with cancer and other serious illnesses, implemented in every country around the world! Good news, it’s already uploaded and ready to reused on unoriginal.work.
Social Good, Made Scalable
Launched at Creativity4Better Conference in Bucharest, unOriginal is a library and a statement at the same time. It says that choosing results over shiny new tricks can matter more than the flashiest creative. Because a good idea deserves more than one life.
Final Thought
If you hate deja-vu, keep scrolling (and have a look at my « non profit » blog section). But if you believe in impact, in scaling good, in using what already works, unOriginal might just change the way you see “originality”. In the end, the world doesn’t need a new idea. It needs the right one. And the right one might already be on unoriginal.work. And if there’s not, maybe you should be the one to upload it!
