I went to the Movies today, since it was my first day off in a couple of days from my mind numbing, capitalist crushing, advantage taking job of working in a Betting shop/Bookies.
Money is the root of all evil, but money is also money. I need it to replace what I've greedily spent from my overdrafts when I was working and living in NYC. So then I can re-spend all the overdraft on my next life changing trip (either round Europe or back to the US(west coast) ) before I go back to college in October.
Whatever. Anyways, I love going to movies extra early so I can catch all the commercials and future movie trailers. The adverts are all pretty much the same, but because they're in a movie theatre, they are always expensively made and awe inspiring. They do their brainwashing job very well!!!
Anyways this one really got me, if only for the quality of the advert. The cinematography direction of it, is completely GREAT. I wasn't paying too much attention to what it was actually advertising because I was too busy looking at the photography element and the editing of it. So I was trying to guess what exactly this commercial is advertising...
I instantly thought, perhaps a Car because it was going on about journeys and car adverts are some of the better commercials. Then I thought a travel company such as Expedia.com.. Or perhaps a holiday place ... or life insurance.
But I got them all wrong.
Right at the end, I realised... Fashion has gone existential for its demographic.
Which, I suppose it works because according to Maslow's Social Hierarchy of needs, each stage we complete the higher up, more expensive our wants become.
So for example, I'm way too poor to even think about buying any Louis Vuitton or anything along the lines of that. I'm too busy trying to pay my rent (which I'm struggling with), whilst daydreaming of getting away from the UK. But people who can afford Louis Vuitton clearily want to define their own existence, since with money comes power and with power comes corruptness absolutely.
Anyways, perhaps if I was that kinda girl who was into the Louis Vuitton style, scene. If that was indeed what I inspired to - Thanks to this commercial I would have run to Macy's and asked Murph for his discount and bought some right up!
But I ain't that kinda girl.
At the moment I'm aspiring to some new headphones because my new ones broke :(.
Enjoy!
On image
The Keith Richards/Annie Leibovitz spot is pretty instructive. In a minute or so you see how constructed his image is, much better than the nearly two hours of the movie "Shine a Light." And LV is mostly concerned with constructing an image though a close proximity to art. I'll have to have a look on the first floor to see if Macy's has LV. I know it has Coach but LV may be in our sister store, Bloomingdale's (both owned by Federated Department Stores, now just called Macy's).
Lacoste has a different branding strategy. The Lacoste family still owns a majority of the company and it has been repositioned as a designer brand helmed by Christopher Lemaire. Growing up in the US it was always Izod/Lacoste but Izod is now a lower-end brand completely divorced from Lacoste.
I've been puzzled by the Lacoste adverting strategy, or maybe it's just not aimed at the American market. We have new "visuals" in our shop for the fall collection with a very young, very skinny guy with bad hair modeling the clothes. He's really then, almost aenemic, but the classic Lacoste polo shirt is cut boxy to fit the physique of a Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer, which is big shouldered and square. In the ads and on the models in the store the shirts have to be pinned in the back to make them "slim fit," and that's what everyone expects.
By coincidence there is a Locoste pour homme ad that is similar to the "American Psycho" clip I posted the other day. Where in the world does this commercial air with its buck naked man playing soccer with a sofa cushion? Now if I found that particular naked man in my living room I'd probably have another heart attack:
When I worked on the Revlon account at Grey Advertising years ago they would recreate iconic photographs by Richard Avedon shot, I think, by Avedon himself. The pose would be familiar or maybe it's the aura, disproving Walter Benjamin.