Imagine my NSFW delight when, on the way to the office today, I saw this ad featuring the heavenly Alexander Skarsgård on the corner of Houston & Lafayette, the legendary Calvin Klein billboard HQ. (Hmm, just across the street from the Soho gas station where Meekus dies in Zoolander… how far you’ve come, my reincarnated male model.)
But this ad doesn’t make me want to buy Calvin Klein stuff, it just makes me want to be reincarnated as Charlize Theron and also never watch an art film again.
Don’t misunderstand me, True Blood fans. It is always a good thing when we the people have more opportunities to see A-Skars, especially unclothed. And it was refreshing to have the CK Super Bowl ad for the ladies after object-of-my-hatred GoDaddy once again objectified/ignored women as a domain-buying demographic (more on that later).
Listen, I’m all for auteur filmmaking to promote brand awareness – more emerging artist/brand integrations, I say! – but this is so BMW-seven-years-ago.
And is a billboard even a good way to advertise an online video? I clicked, but after four post-Super Bowl days online, there are only 144K views. That seems low for that big of an ad spend.
While we’re talking YouTube best practices: don’t post the title of your video as “campaign” when it’s consumer-facing (let alone the internal-language CK brand channel description). It reminds me that you regard me as a consumer, not a viewer.
“Like convections, I rise.” Oh, did Maya Angelou write the script?
I just have a hard time thinking of Calvin Klein as black-label luxury when every time I walk into a discount department store, the racks are full of Calvin labels. They’re brand extensioned out. I mean, the price point of my go-to basic CK bra is like $36. That ain’t paying for no art film.
But you tell me: do the flaming mirrors of the desert make you want to buy a sheath dress – or grab a fire extinguisher?
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Comments
“Provocations” ad wasn’t shown during the Super Bowl, it was another ad – men’s underwear – in which was model Matthew Terry and I want to do another correction that Askars is fully dressed in his advertising … and besides, different versions of the ad have at least a few million views on youtube …
You’re right Gucio – see my link to the Super Bowl ad above.
What’s your take – do you like the Provocations campaign?
(I am possibly conflating True Blood’s last season with this campaign re quantity of clothing.)
In my opinion, 10-minute film had good and bad moments, but for me it was a lot better than many recent fashion ads that I watched. You may like it or not but certainly it does the job, it advertises the clothes and doing it quite well – Suvi’s shoes are beautiful, jeans look good on their bodies, the suits look great on Alex and the white dress I’d love to have
… and I really like the ads prepared for magazines and billboards …
You made some good points. In particular, they reminded us this is a “campaign” and we are the consumers through their failed YouTube practices. True. And, yes, the explosion was unnecessary.
In regards to CK being a black-label luxury brand while also being overly available at discount stores is a problem many “luxury” brands face. They just can’t leave the easy money on the table and walk away. Instead they over extend themselves getting into markets they don’t care about and that hurt their image and dilute their brand equity. That’s another post for another day.
Overall, I loved the video. I appreciate that a brand would generate longer format content that doesn’t go for the in-your-face hard sell. It was beautiful, thoughtful, artful, and tastefully done. It appealed to me on many levels and made me want to own the clothes. I would have probably enjoyed another few minutes.