by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Guy Who Just Got Turned Off Vodka; image – scan of actual magazine ad by Belvedere Vodka…
So I’m thumbing through my favorite geek magazine, Wired, when I’m suddenly confronted by this Belvedere Vodka ad that features a woman applying lipstick in the reflection of a belt buckle. (If any of my female readers have ever executed such a task, please let me know… What? None of you have? Gee, what a surprise!) Not exactly what I expected in Wired amidst ads for techie toys and the Discovery Channel. (Hey, have we got a discovery for you…)
I’m all for creative media placement, and I reckon VC-funded geeks drink expensive vodka and fantasize about women in awkward positions. But this also seems out of character for an upscale liquor brand. And I’m not sure how this image relates to the tagline “Luxury Reborn,” unless what constitutes “luxury” has taken one hell of a dive.
So as part of my civic duty as Blogger in Chief at Atomic Tango, I had to investigate. I type in the web address, which Belvedere smartly included for Wired’s web-addicted readership (not all advertisers seem to get this point).
I come upon the Belvedere site, which asks me to confirm that I am of “legal drinking age,” and like a savvy 13-year-old, I simply click “Yes.” (The absurdity of Web morality is enough to drive me to drink.)
I then hear a trippy trance riff as sung by some inebriated chanteuse. I’m also invited to click on “Discover Luxury Reborn” and am happy to see that Belvedere gets integrated marketing. No disconnect here. And what I see is a film trailer featuring misbehaving nouveau riche New Yorkers throwing air kisses and generally being uber-hipper than thou. Look, they’re vandalizing artwork! How edgy! How au courant! How Jack Nicholson in Batman 1989!
This trailer, I’m guessing, is for a forthcoming online Belvedere film, since there’s no explanation anywhere. As a producer of branded content, and a fan of BMW’s pioneering online films, I’m thrilled to see it. So I check out who’s starring in this one… Oh, of course: Vincent Gallo.
Luxury reborn? More like poverty of creative thinking.
I sincerely loved Gallo’s film Buffalo ’66 which contains perhaps the most creative effort in cinematic history to get viewers to sympathize with a character. No petting the dog here, we follow Gallo as he’s released from prison and desperately tries to find a place to take a leak. It just gets funnier and more creative from there.
But Gallo is more infamous for other deeds. As the Trivia section of Gallo’s IMDB bio poetically puts it, “Known for his outspoken views and the outspoken way of speaking them out.” Gallo was also the writer-director of The Brown Bunny, in which actress Chloe Sevigny goes the next step beyond applying lipstick using a belt buckle.
We’ve got a theme going here, people.
The site also features interviews with other artsy New Yorkers talking about what it means to live downtown and be “underground” and “unpredictable.” Maybe Belvedere felt the need to wildly differentiate itself from all the other “preppie vodkas” flooding the market, and that they had to literally stoop to extremes to make this vodka appear edgy. I’m also thinking that Belvedere confused Wired with Conde-Nast’s other publications (Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, etc.), or that Conde-Nast sold them a package deal.
Regardless of the reason, all of this should fly miles over the heads of Wired’s Silicon Valley readers (average age 37, 78% male), who define a “good time” as a video-game face-off with guys from other startups. It remains to be seen if this ad makes them buy expensive vodka — or just really shiny belt buckles.
Update 2 April 2012: Wow, just when you think Belvedere couldn’t get any lower, they run an ad that insinuates rape and uses a stolen image. (Out of respect for the actress whose photo was stolen, I refuse to show it here.) Completely classless. I had to wait till April 2 to confirm this, in case it was an April Fools joke. How could professional marketers be that clueless?
I understand their overall goal… show a girl that looks like she is about to perform or has just finished performing some kind of oral act and just show a url. That way the reader thinks he is going to see something dirty when he goes to the website.
The style and the message is what doesn’t fit. If it were an American Apparel ad it would fit perfectly. Maybe they want to change their image from upper class “stiff” to upper class “slutty” that is why they are using the tag “Luxury Reborn”. You would expect more from an established well known brand such as this.
Show me a pair of good tits with a url and I don’t care what you are selling… I’m going to the website!! Thats an easy sell!
haha…sad you had to bring up the age of the batman movie 😛
I usually enjoy seeing an ad for say Absolut in Wired but I agree seems a bit over the top.
I think it can be summed up in two words: sex sells. Is it fair or right? Maybe not, but it does get people’s attention.
be careful patting yourself on the back on this one. although you were smart enough to get into harvard, you really missed the point here.
there is a new definition of luxury in today’s world. it used to be the very old school image of old money going to the tennis club for tea and a round of golf where you cheat about your score. now it is the hipster generation that goes to clubs, drops huge $$ on bottles and looks to find a way to show the world that they are above old school rules even though they have money. using a belt buckle to put on lipstic as a tease, not after giving oral sex, captures the essense of the new definition of luxury and the hipster generation.
if you missed the point, it probably wasn’t meant for you. unless you can honestly say you either spend (or aspire to spend) $400 for a bottle of vodka at a club and still missed the point. but i don’t think that you do that or aspire to do that. which is really not relevant. what is relevant is if you can see from a marketing perspective who the target user is and if this add reaches them.
note, i am not a plant. i don’t work for the company. i just happen to work in the industry and disagree with you on this.
[…] Answer: Both are products representing a “luxury lifestyle”. Of course, to buy that line of thinking you’d have to define luxury as drinking red bull and vodka and performing public fellatio. Perhaps Paris Hilton is the target audience? It would probably not be the definition of luxury if you were a reader of Wired, the magazine in which the ad first appeared–seriously flawed marketing as Freddy Nager points out in his Cool Rules Pronto column. […]
Terry Richardson was never much of a feminist.
[…] Because the movie stars Vincent Gallo, maybe the wine people feared that the indie-film crowd would take the wrong cue and pair the flick with a nice glass of Gallo Sonoma Reserve Pinot Noir. Or maybe it’s because the actor Gallo (no relation to the wine family) endorses a brand of vodka… […]