Barneys sending wishes for a hippie holiday
Peace, love and ... Barneys? The upscale Manhattan apparel retailer isn't the first brand you'd associate with the acid-tinged late '60s, but perhaps it's you who needs to get with the times, man. A full-page ad in today's New York Times, for instance, has no middle-aged suited executive types whatsoever—just a naked hippie chick in the woods clutching some peace-symbol-laden handbags. The headline: "Peace & love and bohemian gifts." To cap it off, the "o" in "Barneys New York" is also a peace sign. See the full ad here. Has someone spiked the martinis at Barneys HQ with LSD? Actually, this is the official theme of this year's holiday campaign, says Dawn Brown, a Barneys rep. (Last year's equally unexpected theme: the environment.) Brown says the new work, done in-house, is meant to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the peace symbol (which, interestingly enough, combines the semaphoric signals for the letters "n" and "d," as in "nuclear disarmament"). The other impetus, she says, was the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love. In fact, most peg that summer as 1967. "Some say it was 1968," says Brown. "Some even say it was 1969." Either way, it doesn't have much to do with Christmas. |
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Published on December 5, 2008 | Permalink
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Adidas finds groove with Frankie Valli song
It's hard to imagine a hipper scene than the one portrayed in the latest TV ad for the Adidas Originals brand. The spot, celebrating Adidas's 60th anniversary, shows a rockin' house party crashed by, among others, Katy Perry, D.M.C. (of Run-D.M.C.), Russell Simmons, David Beckham and Method Man. Even harder to imagine: a more unlikely song for everyone to be grooving to. It's Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons' 1968 hit "Beggin' "—not the original, but a remix by Parisian producer Pilooski. Truth be told, it's catchy as hell and fits the commercial's retro/of-the-minute vibe perfectly. Kristian Manchester, creative director and partner of Sid Lee, the Montreal agency that created the ad, said the shop went through thousands of songs before finding this one. Originally, he says, they were looking for a Motown or Stax/Volt tune, but "every time you find a great song, someone would ask, 'Was that in a car ad?' " Only after committing to the track did Manchester find out it had been a huge club hit in Europe in the summer of 2007. Still, he's happy with the choice. "It had the right rhythm and tempo and was a little nostalgic," he says. "It felt like it was from a lost party." Fans take note: Adidas plans to offer seven different remixes of "Beggin' " on its Web site. |
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Published on November 26, 2008 | Permalink
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Remy can cause same-sex necklace biting
A woman flips her head back, as though in the throes of ecstasy, while another looks on, lasciviously biting the first woman's necklace. The caption: "Things are getting interesting." I guess they are. A casual viewer of this out-of-home ad might conclude that the advertiser, Remy Martin, is advocating sapphistry. But Remy rep Marie Christina Batich tells us that's not so. "It's highly interpretive," she says. And yes, that is one interpretation. But unlike IBM, Ikea and some other companies, Remy isn't taking a stand on homosexuality so much as endeavoring to "uncover an avant-garde world," if a press release about the campaign, via Miami's La Comunidad, is to be believed. Nor is it apparently advocating threesomes, which are hinted at in another execution showing a man canoodling with two women. —Posted by Todd Wasserman |
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Published on November 25, 2008 | Permalink
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