Two fashion connoisseurs join forces

The latest Italian fashion: the Lancia Ypsilon ELLE
Fashion is an important value for Lancia. The link between Lancia and fashion are clearly visible in the models Ypsilon Moda Milano & Ypsilon Versus and the advertisements with fashion icons as Carla Bruni and Stefano Gabbana. Lancia and fashion are two examples of design that have put Italian-style  on the map worldwide.

                 

The latest fashion expression of Lancia in collaboration with Elle is a developed version of a Lancia car called Lancia Ypsilon Elle. (Elle is the largest fashion magazine world and is released monthly.) Lancia Ypsilon ELLE is available in over 80 countries and embodies the modern woman: fashionable, trendy, and likes to travel with a worldly perspective on things. The car has a complete equipment and also features Elle. The Elle logo is printed on the dashboard and the slogan of the fashion magazine is printed on the bumper.

Elle magazine came up with a smart action to celebrate the cooperation and to promote the car. Anyone who bought an Elle magazine in July, had a chance of winning a Lancia Ypsilon ELLE. This ensured that Elle sold more magazines that usual and that the car got discussed a lot among the customers of Elle magazine.

I think this is a very good collaboration between two successful brands. It is never happened before that a car manufacturer released a car in collaboration with a fashion magazine. But Lancia and Elle have proved that together they have the appropriate knowledge to meet the needs of their targetgroup, in this case, modern and fashion-conscious women.

Accelerate in style, what more could a fashion lover want?

Riots caused by Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren made a huge mistake by photoshopping a model’s as if they are skeletons. It even caused two riots.

Barely one week before Ralph Lauren published a second disaster, Fillipa Hamilton, a model of Ralph Lauren, got fires because ‘she gained to much weight’. There was a shocking picture of her published, where her head was stuck on an extremely thin model.


But the riots weren’t even passed or Ralph Lauren showed once again a picture of an extremely photoshopped model.
They published photo’s of the Russian model Valentine Zelyaeva on the website, which are obviously photo shopped. The same picture which is not photo shopped is also on the Internet.
If you put the two pictures next to each other, you can see how unrealistic thin they made the model her hips and waist.


Boingboing.com who published the picture and their comments at first, got indicted by the fashion brand, because they think publishing that picture is copyright violation.

The website responded by saying that publishing that picture is to show people that those pictures aren’t real and that it is licit journalism .
The website http://www.photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/ published comments like: "Why don’t they just show their pictures on skeletons, or are skeletons not thin enough?"

Ralph Lauren says that they are going to be more careful in the future. They didn’t say anything about using more healthy(-looking) models is a part of that plan.
I think it’s abnormal that they fake their model’s weight. It looks scary and I don’t believe anyone thinks that is attractive. When I see pictures like that, I don’t even look at the clothes anymore, but get distracted by how thin the models look on the pictures.

I don’t understand who their target group is, young girls? I don’t think young girls think that the models look good, but I think that they find them scary. Why does Ralph Lauren think that that people want to see this kind of excessive thin models?

Diesel keeps the head cool

Diesel has angered many environmental enthusiasts worldwide with its latest campaign. The environmental fanatics say that Diesel makes fun of a very serious problem, global warming.  

With the slogan "Global Warming Ready" Diesel shows you how to keep your head cool, while global warming is heating the earth. Their campagne photos show a sunny cruise around the Arctic, parrots on San Marco square in Venice and many other photos. Diesel finds that climate change isn’t that bad.

‘Of course global warming is a fact’, says Diesel in a statement. ‘The warning signs of self-made climate change are all around us. But that does not mean that it’s the end of the world. Perhaps all the negativity is misplaced and this dramatic call to action is a bit exaggerated.’

 

Diesel said that the goal of this campagne was to ‘heat’ the discussion about global warming even more. Diesel does not joke around with this problem but the campaign highlighted the issue of global warming in the typical style of the brand. With this campaign, Diesel and global warming got a lot of attention.

The campaign is extremely current. An examination of the Climate Commission of the United Nations shows that pessimistic predictions about the rising sea levels and temperature are not correct. There was no scientific evidence to doomsday scenarios.

 

I find it very smart that Diesel looked closely at what is going on in the world and found a good way to draw the attention of a lot of people. This campaign resulted a lot of free publicity for the brand in a good way.

A new Marc Jacobs perfume.. Bang!

This year, for the first time in 10 years, Marc Jacobs launched a new men perfume on the market. The perfume is called ‘Bang!’. There’s nothing wrong with the perfume, but a lot of people (including me) think that the advertisement for the perfume is a little bit too much. It doesn’t match the way they see the brand Marc Jacobs. Marc Jacobs himself is posing nude for the advertisement. The advertisement does not fit the identity of the brand: Marc Jacobs. Unless he wants to reposition the brand or change his image.


                      


Marc Jacobs forgot that the target group of ‘Bang!’-perfume is not women. You can't attract straight men, with a nude gay designer. Unless their target group is gay men, they shouldn’t use a picture of a naked man covering himself up with a huge bottle of perfume. Most of straight men don’t like to see a naked man. They can feel intimidated or even think it’s disgusting. It does draw their attention, but I don’t think it does in a good way, because straight men can think that the clothing line is meant for gay men, and don’t feel addressed.


Marc Jacobs also introduced a bang! game on the Mark Jacob page on Facebook, which is smart in my opinion. People all over the world use Facebook, so they reach a lot of people.
The game is called: Bang! You're it. On Facebook you can 'wink', 'poke' or 'like' someone, but now you can also 'Bang!' someone. If you get 'Banged', you receive points. With those points you can win prices as a trip to New York including a Marc Jacobs show or Bang! perfume.


I`m happy for mister Jacobs, that he has enough self-confidence to do this, but I don't think it was a good idea from his business partner Robert Duffy.

Fashion fades, style is eternal

FCUK was responsible for launching this poster advertisement in Ireland to strengthen its brand image, which eventually received several complaints for being offensive. The poster featured two women in a fighting position with the companying text, Fashion V Style.


The complaints alleged that the advertisement was promoting acts of violence and that the advertisement has used a mixture of sex and violence to show the shock effect of female violence to promote their products.


                      


The advertisers deffended theirselfs by saying that their intention was to highlight a symbolic conflict between style and fashion in and not to cause alarm. They also said that the concept of the advertisement is bassed on a famous Yves Saint Laurent quote: Fashion fades, Style is eternal.


The complaint committee of the advertisement watchdog expressed some concerns, but they did not consider that the advertisement was in breach of the code and did not support the complaints.


It reminded advertisers that approval from CAP in the UK in the UK ( GLB in The Netherlands) does not mean that advertisements are pleasant to see. What is important is what the consumers remember about the brand.


It seems that more and more fashion houses are using shocking ads to alert consumers. This is probably because there is much competition and the advertisers believe that even bad publicity, is publicity. Very occasionally this can work well for a brand, but usually is not the case.


What is your opinion on this campaign? Feel free to leave comments.

H&M

H&M
Nowadays fashion brands need to come up with extraordinary marketing actions, to draw the attention of their target group.
One of the fashion brands who did that is H&M, because on 20th May 2010, H&M launched its third Fashion Against AIDS (FAA) campaign, which includes the first festival collection, with 25% of the sales donated to youth HIV/AIDS awareness projects.


                       


The festival collection is the collection of the third year that H&M has supported the fight against AIDS, so far raised over 30 million dollars. That means that the H&M donated 750.000 dollar to youth HIV/AIDS awareness projects.
It is hard to inform a target group about something they actually don't want to hear. That is why FAA needed to collaborate with a brand who has the youth as its target group. Designers Against AIDS brought the concept of Fashion Against AIDS to H&M and that promotes awareness of HIV/AIDS among the the youth.

WaterAid
H&M has also collaborated with the international charity WaterAid since 2002. Every summer H&M sells an exclusive bikini (and last summer a whole swimwear collection) where 10% of the income are donated to WaterAid. In 2010 the yearly donation was more than 580 000 dollars, making the total donation to WaterAid more than 2,7 million dollar since the start of the partnership.


                                                            
CSR
H&M is a Corporate Social Responsible (CSR) company. They do a lot for the environment and society. Since June 2006 the company has the European Ecolabel. De symbol, the flower, stands for less use of dangerous materials and repress the pollution of water in the whole production.

Dove's real women

There’s much talk of models and how perfect the women in a commercial or in an advertisement look. This is a big influence to the youth. A lot of people think that women need to be perfect, just as in the advertisement, or just like women in commercials.

                                          

In 2006 The Dove self-esteem fund broadcasted a commercial about the perception of beauty being distorted and stereotypes. In the commercial you see a model before a photo shoot. At first she doesn’t wear any make-up and hasn’t done anything to her hair yet. After the make-up artist put a ton of make-up on her face and after the hairdresser did her hair, they took the picture and after that they Photoshoped it. You can see the before and after, and the huge difference between those two.

Dove True Beauty commercial

I think it’s a great well thought commercial, because it shows people that what you see in an advertisement, on billboards, in magazines etcetera is fake.

After some reading on the Internet I have my doubts about the campaign. You would expect that this campaign is good for Dove's image, but After the advertisement of Dove was exposed, a famous airbrusher: Pascal Dangin said that he Photoshopped Dove's "real women"! 

The commercial is supose to lead to a positive image of Dove. Dove says that the company and the self-esteem fund both believe that real beauty is in different shapes, sizes and ages. That's why Dove launched the campaign: "Real beauty".