Fashion Special: Fashion Advertising

Twenty years ago fashion advertising was creative, controversial and part of the cultural conversation, but in moving from print to film, has it become a case of style over substance? As the notoriously insular industry navigates a new retail landscape and changing consumer expectations, Selena Schleh explores how a new spirit of accessibility is informing and influencing everything from digital innovation and experiential in-store marketing to the emerging genre of fashion film

Like an extravagant couture creation bedecked in feathers and furbelows, fashion advertising is, to the wider industry, a source of both fascination and ridicule. Ralph Watson, chief creative officer of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Boulder sums it up thus: “Fashion advertising always seems to be operating at a level that no one can seem to relate to. I think we are all drawn to it, as if it’s a joke that maybe we’ll understand one day when we make enough money or know enough vague and esoteric people.” 

At the heart of the matter is an enormous difference in creative approach. “The fashion industry tends to lead on aesthetics over ideas,” says Lindsay Nuttall, BBH London’s chief digital officer, who has worked with brands on both ends of the spectrum, from fast-fashion e-tailer ASOS, to luxury British label Burberry. That often results in campaigns that, while beautifully produced and impeccably art-directed, can appear what Ben Tollett, ECD at adam&eveDDB, calls ‘concept-light and product-heavy’ to someone from the wider industry.

But is this simply a case of creative snobbery? After all, selling beautiful clothes by putting them on beautiful people and shooting them in beautiful surroundings is a formula that has served the global fashion industry pretty well so far, if estimates of it being worth US$3.5 trillion are anything to go by. No wonder fashion brands, particularly at the luxury end, haven’t been banging on the doors of external agencies, preferring to handle their communications and advertising in-house. “As highly creative companies themselves, [fashion brands] may feel nervous about outsourcing creative equity,” explains Nuttall. “[Fashion] goes beyond the product itself, it’s about an entire language,” adds Anthony Cassidy, creative director at communications agency Portas, which counts Comptoir des Cotonniers, Clarks and Westfield among its clients. “Unless you have an agency that is in effect an extension of your business it’s hard for them to really get under the skin of that vision. Fashion is by its very nature a creative business. You show me a true visionary creative who likes to hand any level of control over to a third party.”

However, the payoff for doing so can be more impactful communications, says Nuttall. “They [brands] do miss out through lack of external collaboration in the creative industries. Few things really break through in culture, and that’s what creative agencies can bring to the party. It’s ideas that capture the collective imagination, and great communication mostly has a great idea in it – when this is missing, something big is lost.” 

Controversy? That’s so last season, darling

Twenty years ago, fashion ads were very much part of the cultural conversation – and in many cases leading it, through highly controversial print campaigns that got the public talking. A case in point: United Colors of Benetton, which has famously tackled every political and social taboo from AIDS to racism; 2011’s Unhate advocated global love with mocked-up images of world leaders mid-smooch. Meanwhile, Calvin Klein, Wonderbra and Diesel were notorious for larger-than-life, no-holds-barred billboard images that screamed sex. Remember a teenage Brooke Shields declaring: ‘Nothing comes between me and my Calvins’? Or Eva Herzigová in full cups-runneth-over mode beneath the headline: ‘Hello Boys’?

But unlike the ‘in’ colour this season (powder pink, FYI, darling), these days the tone has become a bit beige. Just ask BMB’s Trevor Beattie, the creative behind the aforementioned Wonderbra poster, who’s also known for rebranding French Connection as a misspelled swear word. “Diesel’s ads are dull. Guess has run the same imagery for over a decade. Ditto Calvin Klein… Big ad campaigns for fashion brands are now a rare thing. Many brands are developing more intimate ‘relationships’ with customers, via social media and loyalty schemes. There’s far less broadcast. Fashion has stopped shouting and prefers to whisper in our social ear.” 

It’s telling that the most controversial ‘fashion’ campaign this year, courtesy of Lew’LaraTBWA São Paulo and the Abrinq Foundation, was actually a blow struck against the industry for its use of child labour, expressed in ostensibly glossy images of a model posing in the latest threads, which on closer inspection revealed young workers ‘imprisoned’ in the fabric of the garments. 

So what’s to blame? Shifting social norms and the power of the Twittersphere have certainly played a major role. Take US fashion chain American Apparel, which built a hip reputation in the early Noughties via risque advertising and daring PR stunts, like sticking merkins on mannequins. Fast-forward a few years and factor in ex-CEO Dov Charney’s fall from grace (he was fired last year following numerous sexual misconduct allegations), and those images of half-naked young girls in knee-high socks don’t look so daring – more exploitative, grubby and outdated. Consumers voted with their wallets: the company has just filed for bankruptcy protection in the US.

“Thanks to the way we experience advertising now, through the internet and social media, there are lots of groups calling out bad, sexist campaigns,” notes fashion film director Kathryn Ferguson. While fewer images of post-orgasmic women lying on beds is certainly something to be celebrated, it has also coincided with a general play-it-safe mentality – and a consequent watering-down of creative risks – in fashion advertising across the board.

Some brands are still finding ways to challenge, without also alienating, consumers. X, a recent spot for luxury lingerie purveyors Coco de Mer via TBWALondon and Rankin Films “explored the limits of the erotic imagination” through an intricate montage of explicit and abstract imagery: cut-out bras one second, the Grim Reaper the next. “Porn is immediate and puddle-deep,” explains TBWALondon creative director Walter Campbell of the fine line between sex and smut, “we wanted something you’d wonder about… It had to be more lingering and lyrical.”

“It was a chance to create something completely new, bold and provocative,” adds Rankin Films director Vicky Lawton. “The style was very reminiscent of the 90s advertising ethos – which was to challenge the viewer, and take them out of their comfort zone.”

Its stores are fragrant shopping havens tending to every customer whim, but when it comes to advertising, luxury emporium Harvey Nichols is another brand that’s happy to push viewers’ buttons. Labelled “an unapologetic homage to selfishness and greed” by Adweek, 2014’s Grand Prix-winning Christmas campaign, Sorry, I Spent It On Myself, encouraged people to gift their loved ones toothpicks or plugs from a custom-created ‘ultra low net worth’ range, and spend big on luxury presents for themselves [for more, see box, page 45]. More recently, #LoveFreebies daringly used real CCTV footage of shoplifters, their identities masked by whimsical cartoon graphics, to promote the store’s loyalty card scheme. “Harvey Nichols set out to create campaigns which get shared and talked about – it helps their small media budget stretch further,” says adam&eveDDB ECD Ben Tollett. “If you want your work to be passed on then it can be a good thing to… provoke [consumers] a bit. Controversy can be a good thing.”

A tongue in chic touch

What’s increasingly clear, though, is that controversy for controversy’s sake won’t wash with consumers any more. Perhaps that’s why more and more fashion brands are turning to – gasp! – humour in their communications instead. For proof, look no further than haute couture house Valentino, whose Paris Fashion Week show reached pop-culture consciousness earlier this year when actors Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson (reprising their roles as dozy male models Derek Zoolander and Hansel) hijacked the catwalk to promote Zoolander 2 – promptly sending the jaded front row into an Instagramming frenzy.

But surely this flies in the face of a universal fashion truism – much like you can never be too rich or too thin and horizontal stripes are not your friend – that looking good is a serious business? “Commercially speaking, luxury brands don’t think you need a sense of humour to sell clothes,” agrees Portas’ Cassidy. Fred Raillard, co-founder of digital agency Fred & Farid, which works with Hermès and Van Cleef & Arpels, adds that “humour can even damage the value of a luxury brand: it’s such a superficial industry, it has to work hard to make us take it seriously.”

However, this po-faced reputation has never been entirely justified, say Wanda directors Leila & Damien de Blinkk. “Fashion is no stranger to humour. Look at the powerful and iconic fashion imagery created by French photographer Guy Bourdin in the 70s and 80s, which fused a great sense of narrative [with] humour, surrealism and elegance.” The duo successfully replicated that offbeat humour in three spots for German retailer Otto. In Au Revoir, a couple dining a deux are interrupted by a mysterious woman who places a fluffy chick on their table, smiles enigmatically and then sashays away, leaving them wondering… just where did she get that dress?

adam&eveDDB also brought their deft touch with comedy to British luxury brand Mulberry for 2014’s #WinChristmas campaign film, where a family compete for a female relative’s affections with increasingly extravagant gifts, from a paw-waving puppy to a unicorn. Of course, it’s granny’s present – a bright red Mulberry handbag – that gets the biggest reaction.

Even more laughs lie in sending up stereotypical fashion ads, as agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky proved with 2015’s Plastique, a campaign to reposition underwear brand Fruit of the Loom, which centred around the launch of a new clothing brand by ostentatious designer Frank La Rant, inspired by the see-through plastic trousers worn for underwear testing at Fruit of the Loom’s HQ. Spanning print, billboards, and online, the campaign was later revealed as an elaborate – and effective – hoax. “It was designed from the beginning to get [Fruit of the Loom] into the fashion space in a way that was appropriate for their humble roots,” explains CP+B’s Watson. “We knew we could never just go out and say: ‘Voila, Fruit of the Loom is now a fashion brand!’ Plastique was a highly stylish approach on that same aesthetic level, but it used humour to underscore the fact we don’t ‘get’ the fashion world either.” 

Budget boxer-shorts are one thing, but could the higher echelons of the industry be finally learning to laugh at themselves, too? Lanvin’s AW11 campaign film, shot by Steven Meisel, saw designer Alber Elbaz and a gaggle of models dance awkwardly to Pitbull’s I Know You Want Me. It quickly went viral and was, says Ferguson, “a real game-changer, because it was so refreshing – especially for an uber-luxe Parisian fashion house”. Contemporary designer Vena Cava went even further in 2013 with its Matthew Frost-helmed short Fashion Film, mercilessly skewering the kooky model-type who listens to obscure 60s records, makes collages and “sometimes thinks in French”.

Meanwhile, the official promo for Mercedes-Benz Berlin Fashion Week AW15, A Fistful Of Wolves, hilariously parodied the fragrance ads of the 70s with a highly stylised spot that saw fashion buyer Justin O’Shea moodily driving a Mercedes-Benz C111 concept car, lost in a self-referential narrative, before a friend jolts him back to reality (“Wait a minute. Are you… walking in slow motion?”). For Ferguson, these light-hearted attempts all point to a spirit of accessibility starting to pervade the notoriously insular industry. “Fashion needs more humour, it needs to be more open. The clothes we wear are our identity and the fact that it’s such a shut-off industry in 2015 feels outdated.”

A Big Leap from carousing in cornfields

Greater porosity to outside influences is benefitting the fledgling genre of fashion film as a whole. In fashion, the shift from still to moving image has seemingly proved more challenging than other industries. “Fashion is traditionally mainly a photography-centric world, not a TV one. So the switch to film and digital is a slow process, often motivated by e-commerce’s performance, which is not always the right process to produce great work,” explains Tarik Malak, one half of directing duo TnT. The early days were dominated by the kind of low-budget, narrative-lite content that has given fashion such a bad name in the wider advertising industry, inspiring clichés like “a girl wearing a dress and standing on a bridge in Paris, with no motivation for being there,” as fashion filmmaker Poppy de Villeneuve puts it.

Rankin Films’ Lawton says “the biggest challenge for a fashion film director is: how can I make this film mean something? Some people are happy to just create a set of moving stills, and they’re very beautiful – but for me, for fashion film to grow and develop, it needs to be taking on more of a conceptual and narrative format.” Stephen Whelan, executive producer at White Lodge, Blink’s fashion production arm, is even blunter. “People don’t want to watch someone twirling round a cornfield or stroking a wall, regardless of whether it’s a supermodel or the biggest celebrity on the planet. If you want people to engage with your brand, you have to give them something more – whether it’s a story or an emotional journey, there’s a trade.”

Since setting up White Lodge in 2011, Whelan has been educating and building trust with fashion clients to move beyond this low-budget ‘behind the scenes’ mentality, by getting directors involved much earlier in the creative conversation. It’s an approach that has yielded fruit for British fashion brand Ted Baker, which has shunned traditional advertising for quirky shorts in which fashion plays second fiddle to the narrative. Wonders Never Cease, for AW15, is a whimsical tale of romance between two rival treasure-hunters, while A Tall Tale’s equally surreal series of shorts involves former Olympic champion Mark Foster, East End gangsters and a trippy synchronised swimming routine.

Filmmaking collective Crowns & Owls, who shot the films, are keen to bring a different angle to the genre. “There are lots of different ways of making clothes look good without the obvious cliché of a girl just walking around looking sexy,” says director Tom Harrison. However, Whelan adds that Ted Baker’s maverick creative approach has been bolstered by “a strong sense of its own identity”. Unlike many fashion brands, it’s free from the shackles of a large holding conglomerate.

Engaging, beautifully crafted and creative fashion films are also being generated by luxury department stores. Selfridges has made a huge investment in the medium, hiring Kathryn Ferguson as its resident filmmaker and launching a dedicated broadcast channel, Hot Air. The result? A slew of documentary-style ‘think pieces’ and fashion films tackling hot topics like diversity in beauty (The Beauty Project), ageing (Bright Old Things) and gender neutrality (Agender, featuring a specially-commissioned track, He, She, Me, by Neneh Cherry and Devonté Hynes). “For a big luxury brand – not a fashion house, but a luxury fashion retailer nonetheless – Selfridges has taken an incredibly progressive approach,” says Ferguson, who also commissions content from other rising fashion filmmakers such as Ruth Hogben and Elisha Smith-Leverock. “[Selfridges] has understood the merits in trying to push things as creatively as possible, which is the opposite of most fashion brands I’ve worked with… The process is very collaborative and super-organic, and I’ve had complete free rein to go out and explore.”

This is a genre in its infancy, but the recent recognition of fashion films at creative awards shows is a good sign. Last year, Wren’s viral hit First Kiss and Lacoste’s The Big Leap both picked up Lions at Cannes. For Ferguson, this creative uptick is being driven by directors from other genres, who are starting to experiment with fashion film: “The layers of storytelling and the filmmaking expertise are already there, so it’s just a case of adding in the fashion elements.” The Big Leap, which drew parallels between a first kiss and jumping off a high-rise building, was director Seb Edwards’ first foray into fashion. “I didn’t know what to expect, but the client was very smart and open minded,” he recalls. “It’s rare to get an opportunity in [fashion] commercials to shoot something genuinely emotive. I liked the fact that it was relatable but surreal at the same time.”    

For brands that have both budget and balls, epic pieces of branded content in which fashion is interwoven into the narrative, rather than being centre-screen, are looking like the next step. H&M has just released a six-minute comedy short to mark its Modern Essentials campaign, starring US comedian Kevin Hart as a meticulous method actor shadowing David Beckham – matching outfits and all – in preparation for a fictional biopic. The former footballer also made an appearance in the equally ambitious Outlaws, a 15-minute short for British heritage brand Belstaff, featuring a clutch of Hollywood heavyweights in the surreal yarn of a renegade motorcycle stuntman – a seamless fit for the brand’s leather biker jackets.

Ultimately, it’s a case of wait and see. “That’s the interesting thing about a new medium,” says Knucklehead director Elisha Smith-Leverock, “you don’t know what people are going to do with it and where it’s going to go. I just hope it stays experimental and exciting.”

A virtual changing room in your phone

Beautiful pieces of film are one thing, but with e-commerce driving creative output, interactive elements are now more than a nice-to-have for savvy fashion brands. Interactive lookbooks first popped up in 2011, when digital creative agency Stinkdigital London launched the Urban Tour site for ASOS Men, whereby visitors could click, at various points, on a film about street dancers to pause the action, find out more and buy online.

Nowadays, customisation is the name of the game. “As well as letting the audience go deeper into areas of the film that they connect with most – perhaps a particular look, or a piece of the collection – people are even able to manipulate the scene to make it more personal to them,” explains Stinkdigital’s managing partner James Britton, citing a recent project for shoe label Geox, You Control The Weather, which allows users to choose the elements – sunny, rainy, snowy – which then changes the course of a love story. But digital trickery, no matter how sophisticated, is only part of the experience: “The linear film still needs to stand on its own merits creatively,” he adds. 

Earlier this year, in a first for a fashion brand, White Lodge created a shoppable, virtual reality app for Jean-Pierre Braganza’s capsule collection for River Island Design Forum. Working with creative production services company Happy Finish and Google Cardboard, they repurposed the animated assets created for the campaign film into a VR experience that customers could access via their smartphones. “It allowed viewers to physically and visually enter the [Jean-Pierre Braganza] world in a very different way to viewing the two-dimensional film on screen,” explains Whelan.  

While mid-tier fashion brands may have embraced the digital and social world, high-end designers have been more reticent. Isabelle Harvie-Watt, global CEO of Havas Group’s luxury strategic consulting service, LuxHub, puts it down to two factors: “First and foremost was the fear of losing exclusivity: the more you open yourself up and build a relationship with consumers, the less exclusive you become. And then there was the fact their businesses were growing so fast that they didn’t really have to try [to engage].”

But with growth in emerging markets slowing, and luxury e-tailers Net-a-Porter and Farfetch changing consumers’ expectations, fashion houses are having to up their game. “In China, people are less and less impressed by luxury brands, so the industry will have to reinvent itself or die,” says Raillard. “When the market is under pressure, it’s good for creativity.” Burberry has been leading the charge, putting technology at the heart of its business, from e-commerce to interactive stores and live-streaming its runway shows on Twitter, but its high-end competitors are catching up fast.

French maison Hermès has just teamed up with AKQA on a new web-based platform, MANifeste, which takes the interactive lookbook to new heights through a playful riff on lists: it’s the kind of genuinely engaging content you can while away hours on, learning dapper dance moves or mastering the ‘art’ of sandcastle building. More esoteric in concept, but equally entertaining is MCM’s FWA-winning Into The Glitch, an interactive film and site inspired by Monty Python and Magritte.

When it comes to social media, new platforms like firm fashionista favourite, Instagram, are offering brands creative ways to engage with consumers. #SpringIsWeird, Wieden+Kennedy New York’s modern-day soap opera for retailer Gap, used twelve 15-second-long instalments, released weekly, to tell the story of a couple whose real lives and Instagram lives are merging into one. Brilliantly bite-sized for short attention spans, the micro-campaign was also full of witty meta-references: when the hero knocks twice on the heroine’s door, a big white heart appears – echoing the way users double-tap an Instagram image to ‘like’ it.

For luxury brands, though, success on social media is about quality not quantity, says Harvie-Watt. She cites Hermès as a success story: “They don’t need to go after numbers, that doesn’t make sense [for a luxury brand], but they’ve been very clever about building engagement.” Fred & Farid Shanghai, who created the launch campaign for Hermès’ (even more) exclusive sister brand, Shang Xia, described the approach as “diving but staying dry: inviting people to join the experience on social media, but maintaining a sense of mystery”. To create a conversation, the agency posted images of an enigmatic masked figure on the streets of Shanghai, Beijing and Paris, without any explanation or tagline beyond the brand logo: they racked up 5 million views, but stopped short of enlisting an influencer to inflate the total. “A key opinion leader could have transformed that into 25 million views, but there was no point [commercially], and it might have damaged the brand,” says Raillard. 

Social media has also managed to democratise the biggest marketing event in the industry’s calendar – its biannual fashion weeks, when buyers flock to the style capitals of New York, London, Milan and Paris for the unveiling of the new season’s collections. Catwalk presentations are no longer the exclusive preserve of Vogue editors and celebs; brands now live-stream shows on social media, giving customers the ability to shop directly from the runway.

This season, BBH London’s branding division, ZAG, announced the start of a three-year partnership with the British Fashion Council to transform London Fashion Week “from a closed, high-end trade show to a major event in London’s cultural calendar”. Whether mere mortals will be squeezing onto the front row with Anna Wintour remains to be seen, but it’s certainly yet another indication that the industry is opening up and becoming more inclusive.

The high-tech future of fashion

Cutting-edge tech is also driving more creative ways for consumers to engage with the runway. Topshop Unique broke new ground at LFW last year with a 360°, virtual reality catwalk experience, allowing visitors to the London flagship store to ‘attend’ the brand’s AW14 show. “We had to make it better than being at the show, with additional elements and access,” explains lead creative Alex Lambert of production company Inition, which designed the VR experience, “so as well as the catwalk feed we had a live backstage feed and a live Twitter feed too. To fit the seasonal theme, the tweets were shaped like autumn leaves and dropped in by a crow.”

Outside of fashion week, retailers are eager to entice customers away from their screens and into physical stores. While stunning window-displays at famous department stores like Bergdorf’s and Harrods can still draw the crowds, it’s now all about ‘experiential sartorial journeys’, such as the ‘Future of Fashion’ pop-up created by Portas and Inition for luxury mall Westfield, using virtual reality headsets, Leap Motion gesture tracking and a personalised avatar. Selfridges also dabbled in immersive entertainment with the virtual reality experience Monolith, to promote British designer Gareth Pugh’s first ready-to-wear men’s collection last year. “The idea was you’d be wandering round the shop floor, step inside this nondescript box and suddenly enter the crazy world of [Pugh’s] imagination,” explains Lambert, who worked closely with the designer to create a sense of theatre around the VR experience – right down to a hyper-stylised mask housing the Oculus headset.