Since tomorrow is December 1st, I guess it is time to be getting into the holiday spirit. Every year I look forward to The Gap's holiday ads. They always make me feel warm and fuzzy. And most recently added to the looked forward to ads are H&M.
All I can say is, what happened? In 2009 they changed ad agencies for their holiday campaign to Crispin Porter + Bogusky, and then in February of this year they changed to Ogilvy. I don't like this most recent change. Are they just advertising for kids? While the ad is cute, the little girl recently did a cover of Lady Gaga's Born This Way song which was amazing, but what about adults? Also, though they say print is dieing, why have they not published their print campaign? Last year in early November, their Holiday Campaign was released.
There is a small? community of advertising and fashion lovers like myself who scan ads or just view ads on forums. These are national or international campaigns. You can always expect a "leak" of some sort for big campaigns. On thefashionspot.com, there is a section for ad campaigns which has 2,774 threads and 165,353 posts (as of 6:08 on Nov 30). On October 7th, they started a post for people to list who would be in each fashion campaign for Spring Summer 2012, and who the photographers were. So, when I went searching for The Gap holiday ads, I was greatly disturbed when there wasn't a thread for it.
Then, when I went on bwgreyscale, a more condensed site of ad scans categorized by magazines they are featured in, I was very surprised when they didn't have any ads from The Gap. So in a lead up to the current holiday campaign, we will look at my favorite Gap ads of previous years:
Last year, by early November, the ads were out, they focused on what celebrities, famed fashion blogger Susie Bubble, models, and business people wanted. I thought the campaign was photographed perfectly, with the right models, and the right message.
The text for all the ads (courtesy of http://thewondergirl.com/2010/11/)
“If you could give anything in the world what would it be?”
True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten supports City of Hope “all hugs, no worries”
Social Media whiz Alisa Leonard supports Goods for Good “One zillion laptops and one epic hat”
Model and co-founder of FEED Projects, Lauren Bush, supports FEED Projects “a seat for every kid at the table”
Style blogger Susie Bubble (Style Bubble) supports Shelter England “Play down the crazy, dial up the cozy”
Comedian, writer and star of NBC’s Community, Donald Glover supports Community Connections “less naughty, more nice”
Actress and Activist Isabel Lucas supports Sea Shepherd “Sequins in the city and more fish in the sea”
The Dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied supports Baryshnikov Arts Center “To get the whole world moving together”
Foursquare founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai support Camp interactive ”for kids to know where they’re headed but remember where they’ve been”
Broadway’s “Spider-Man,” Reeve Carney supports Partnership for the Homeless “Sun in New York, snow in LA”
Actress Yaya DaCosta supports Women for Women international “A little shine and a lot of faith”
Models Lily Aldridge and Boyd Holbrook “For everyone to find the one”
-----------
2009
------
2008
The campaign included a wide variety of celebrities and models
jennifer Hudson, Rainn Wilson, Mila kunis, Ashanti, Jon Heder, Jason Budakis, fred armisen, seth meyers, will forte (from snl), Jason Bateman and his daughter francesca, milla jovovich and her daughter ever, Lily Donaldson and her brother Jesse, Mary Louise Parker, Nina and Chiara Clemente, Alice Braga, Erin Wasson, Anja and Sasha
Angela Lindvall
For some reason I wasn't able to embed the link so here is the link http://youtu.be/XaH0mWj_NR8
and the images I was able to get from random sites
(This was in Lucky Magazine)...maybe a misprint? They had a supplement magazine called Lucky Kids, which had Gucci kid advertisements, but no Gap kids.
And this ad I found on a site dedicated to the breed of dog.
-----
So that is The Gap. If they have an adult campaign, if they went with the same schedule as the last at least 5 years, it should have been out in early November. Maybe they hope the little girl Maria will bring people to the site since she has so many views on YouTube that probably weren't viewed by little kids.
Also in the past, aside from posting the images online, they used celebrities and models so fans of both would upload the images to different sites.
******
Other Holiday print ads
Tiffany Holiday 2011:
Beautiful as always. After many marketing classes, I still get sucked into this image they portray. It looks like a fairytale...I want it.
------
Banana Republic Holiday 2011
Cute, expected, unoriginal, but I still like it. They almost look like robots in the first picture, but maybe some people aspire to be robots (*sarcasm*).
------
H&M Holiday 2011
I feel H&M ads have now replaced what The Gap ads once were. They are using celebrities, models, and kids.
Love it.
-----
Lastly Zappos Holiday 2011 - with the downturn of the economy, it seems, especially in magazine ad pages, the less expensive brands are showing up more often. Zappos is creative, yet no one had scanned in images except the illustrator for it.- Kendall Bradford
Then you open it up
And you see this. All the clothes are stickers which you can peel off and put on the figure.
And this is once you take the stickers off. It tells you the brand on the leftover white space, and on the back of the sticker is the SKU number.
I love it.
It reminds me of one of my favorite ads. I used to love paper dolls, and I thought the ad was so cute. I cut out the outfits and framed them, and kept a copy of the ad...
It came out in 2005.
This is my last blog entry.
- Sara Jacobson
No comments:
Post a Comment