Imitation is a form of flattery

It takes a wise person to see and realize imitation for what it is. You can choose to let it get to you and upset you or see it for what it is. Simply a form of flattery. When we started as Radio 254, we tried a lot of different things, some worked out, some didn’t, and others got us in trouble. The most memorable occasion was when we used the same graphic designer as Blocka Beats to make a poster for our Golf and Concert event at Muthaiga Golf Club in October 2021. The truth is that we had seen a poster that Blocka had shared on socials for an event and wanted to use the same concept for our event, so we reached out to the graphic designer Muthama, and had him commission the poster for us.

When Muthama delivered the poster, it was exactly what we wanted, so we went ahead and shared it. The mistake we made was that when we saw the Blocka poster, we did not reach out to Blocka and say that we liked his poster and wanted to do something similar. We simply reached out to the designer and told him that we liked the poster and had him recreate it for our concept. In hindsight, if we knew what we know now, we simply would have reached out to Blocka, and he would have either agreed or disagreed to let us use the concept. But instead, we never even asked Blocka to use his concept or idea, we just reached out to the designer and had him make us the poster we had seen and wanted. Life and business are about building relationships. You cannot go far in life by stepping and walking over people. We should have done better because we knew better, but we didn’t. Blocka was upset about the situation, and for a while, we didn’t speak. Thankfully, though, we are now cool with Blocka again and managed to see through that situation. If Blocka ever reads this, we are sorry for imitating your poster. We wanted something you had, which was cool, and it wasn’t cool how we went about it. Thank you for being the bigger man and seeing past that transgression and continuing to f*ck with us. We f*cked, and we learned from it. That’s not how people do things, especially to people who have supported them. Blocka helped us get a lot of interviews in the beginning and is cool, dude, we simply should have reached out but didn’t.

The lesson here is that even we have imitated someone in the past. But we learned from it. So even we have to laugh and appreciate when other people imitate us. It is part of the game. It just depends on how you look at it, how it is done, and how mature you are about it. In art and the creative industry, imitation is a form of flattery. Just don’t steal other people’s work. That’s not imitation that is a crime.