NEW YORK — Banana Republic is streamlining its image for its fall ad campaign, playing on a sense of stylish simplicity and of being modern.
“The past couple of years we’ve slipped away from what’s cool and familiar about the brand,” offered Jacquie Lenart, Banana Republic’s vice president of marketing, who noted Banana’s ads had strayed too far down a path defined by trends featured in the fashion collections. For fall, Lenart said, “we want [to portray] more balance between fashion-collection trends and people’s everyday lifestyle attitudes, a feeling of flexibility and versatility.”
In order to strike that balance, AR, the agency creating Banana’s fall campaign, is using a combination of models and nonmodels, said Raul Martinez, chief executive officer at AR, who described those subjects as “interesting characters who bring more depth to images.”
Though simplicity and modernity are keynotes of the brand’s new ad strategy, a sense of eclecticism also will inflect the images: say, a midcentury chair placed near a gold-gilded frame. “In a contemporary space, you’re informed by so many things,” Martinez observed.
The print and outdoor campaign, photographed by Martine Mulder, will bow in August in the September editions of such magazines as Vogue, Dwell, Esquire, GQ, In Style and Vanity Fair, as well as on billboards, buses and phone kiosks in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago. The fall campaign will be AR’s first for the brand, having succeeded Goodby, Silverstein & Partners as Banana Republic’s ad agency.
While Lenart maintained Banana Republic’s target audience is embodied more by its sensibilities than its age — “a modern soul who’s socially aware, well traveled, well read, aspiring in their careers and relationships” — she further noted the brand sees the ages of 20 to 35 as its sweet spot.