STRANGE AD-FELLOWS? Apparently not. Continuing to capitalize on the fashion consumer’s penchant for cross-shopping store formats and price ranges, Sweden’s Hennes & Mauritz will show its runway-inspired, moderate-priced apparel on supermodels Heidi Klum and Carmen Cass, among others, in its new, “Catwalk”-themed, spring ad campaign. The ads, which highlight H&M’s spring-summer collection of Fifties-inspired colorful, feminine, flirty pieces, will conjure the making of a runway show — from behind-the-scenes hair and makeup treatments to finished looks worn down the runway.
Those styles will also be sported in the campaign by Michelle Alves, Aline Nakashima, Yasmin Warsame, Jessica White, Fernanda Taveres and Maja Latinovic.
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The spring ads reflect an effort to position H&M, known for fast-fashion, as “a place for everyone to find something,” Janke Nystrom, the chain’s U.S. marketing director, said Tuesday. “Usually we’ve had one model in our ads,” Nystrom continued. “Now we want to show a lot of models, so we can show a lot of our outfits.”
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Basics as well as fast styles will be featured in the ads, which were created in-house, as a reminder that both are available at a chain associated with forward looks.
Photographed in New York City by Ellen von Unwerth, the campaign will be mounted in all 18 countries where H&M has stores. In the U.S., print ads will premiere in the April and May issues of magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Essence, Glamour, Lucky, Elle, Paper, Nylon, The Improper Bostonian, Time Out New York, Philadelphia Magazine and Chicago Magazine. (Glamour and Lucky, like WWD, are owned by the Advance Magazine Group of Advance Publications.) The ads also will appear on billboards in the New York and Chicago metropolitan areas and on H&M’s Web site, at hm.com.
In-store, the campaign will debut on March 12, on vehicles ranging from shopping bags to window displays. During the effort’s nine-week run, window displays will be changed frequently, in an attempt to convey the numerous looks paraded down a fashion runway. Styles showcased will range from twin sets to knee-length skirts worn with feminine blouses. Capri pants will be in the spotlight as well, in a variety of styles: mini, knee-length, pencil, flirty and wide. The color palette goes from brights to cool pastels. — V.S.
BRITISH INVASION REDUX: Monty Python meets Brit rock and outsized luxury jewels — wrapped around headlines screaming “Rock Hard,” “Stone Cold,” and “White Wedding” — in new ads marking luxury jeweler Garrard’s attempt to update the image of a brand that has been making jewels for English royalty for 200-plus years. The collage-like ads will support the arrival of Garrard’s first jewelry salon on American shores, expected to open in downtown Manhattan this spring.
“We’ve brought incongruous things together in a chic manner,” noted Douglas Lloyd, president and creative director of ad agency Lloyd & Co., which created the campaign. “We wanted to pair the whimsy of British culture with Jade Jagger’s rock-and-roll sensibility,” he said of the Garrard creative director. The advertising images, many dating to the Seventies, were purchased from the archives of Helmut Newton.
Inspired by Jagger’s aesthetic, Lloyd said, “We were able to break out of traditional, proportional restrictions by showing larger images of the jewelry.”
The Garrard ads also may appear around Manhattan in wild postings — posters like those placed outdoors to promote a rock concert or album — which would mark a departure for a luxury jewelry brand. The idea was Jagger’s. Locations have yet to be finalized, Lloyd said. — V.S.