There’s been quite a bit of high profile negative feedback about the new Chanel No5 ad fronted by Brad Pitt. Like here, here and here.
The one above is the second ad from the campaign – the first one below (despite probably costing millions to make) has more than a whiff of mood-film-shot-in-an-agency-meeting-room-for-tuppence about it:
All this negative feedback has got a point – he’s (as ITIABTWC puts it) texting in his performance and the script makes no sense whatsoever.
screen grabbed from Conan (via steakandcheese on ITIABTWC)
On the other hand, a friend pointed out on facebook that at least Chanel’s use of Mr Pitt acknowledges that more women are buying perfume for themselves (although in 2010 Mintel was clear that women were still more likely to receive fragrance as a gift than to buy it for themselves). Perhaps it’s simply that women are nowadays more likely to specify exactly which perfume they’d like to receive as a gift, rather than settle for whatever their husband/boyfriend/lover happened to like the packaging of at the duty free shop.
If Brad had a script that talked about what makes women strong, beautiful and intriguing (and actually put some effort into delivering it) then I think Channel could have had an ad that placed No5 on women’s not-very-subtle-hint Christmas lists. As it is, it’s no better than wrapping paper.
PS it turns out a bloke who writes for GQ came up with the script. Whether this could be viewed as a genius or idiot move depends entirely on who you think buys the blumin stuff in the end.
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