There are not hundreds, but millions of fashion adverts all around us, yet contemporary campaigns often end up offending or disappointing consumers.
This was the case for example with the recent Harvey Nichols campaign for the department store sales that showed models wetting themselves in excitement and that received harsh comments from many consumers on the social media.
While that may be considered simply bad taste or the wrong choice of advertising agency, in recent years quite a few brands and fashion houses jumped on the blogger bandwagon looking for ideas, product endorsement or collaborations that at times ended up producing bland adverts.
You would have hoped for example that, by hiring a trendy high profile blogger/photographer/illustrator, Reed Krakoff would have achieved more clever results than a bag photographed travelling around the world like Amélie's garden gnome (View this photo).
As cool as that may be the company may have saved some money asking ordinary people living in unusual places to take the pics then (ah, you say that this wouldn't have been cool as no high profile blogger would have been involved? Well, then you would agree with me in saying that all these brands are not about "democratising fashion" but they are just looking for trendy/hip/cool people…).
What I personally think is missing in advertising campaigns are effective and stylish illustrations.
Photography was not so popular in the '50s, so illustrators were often hired for fashion/beauty campaigns in those years.
One of the most popular artists then was René Gruau (check out previous posts on this site for further information about him). The illustrator seems to have turned fashionable again after a few young designers and make up artists started referencing him in their works.
Here are two examples of campaigns illustrated by Gruau for Schuberth's fragrance "Schu" and Payot's beauty products. Yes, they look very '50s (these two campaigns are dated 1959 actually), but they also look rather stylish thanks to Gruau's light/shadows effects, close-ups and effective use of simple silhouettes.
Time to bring back the illustrator in the advertising campaigns? Yes, definitely, but if you do have any doubts about the answer, you still have plenty of time to go and visit the exhibition "Go Figure: New Fashion Illustration" at London's Fashion Space Gallery (until 14th July 2012). I'm sure you'll agree with me after seeing it.
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I can say some advertising agency really give a lot of advantage for a business advertising,but still for me it is very challenging if you are the one who are advertising your product,in Finland they use exhibition stands for advertising and it is really a very effective specially if you have an eye caching with a good content for your product.