my answer was a big fat cheat, for the reason you highlight. I'd add that what I said was that these were ingredients in hits, not that they guaranteed a hit. (That would be ridiculous.) No good producer is always successful. I think there has to be someone experienced and I think if you look at the successful producers, you'll see that they started watching and learning from below (not as investors who think they gained experience from above). But what they do is not copy because as you say copying usually fails.
