If The Beatles Can Sell Rock Band

Levi's is taking some heat for jumping on the death of Ted Kennedy as an excuse to put out a "tribute" ad.

I say let it be open season on Kennedy images. Such possibilities. Ray-Ban sunglasses, Italian yachts, or this classy ad for Converse that I just made.

Full size

Find a Real One on eBay for Less

"Some things just get cooler with age," reads the website. "They develop an unmistakable mojo over time that makes them look cooler and feel even more comfortable than when they were new," they go on to philosophize.

This is forgivable when it happens with jeans. Nothing screams "brand new pants" like some 501s that have never seen a washing machine. But I can't forgive this in a line of new guitars. From Fender no less.

These are not "road worn" instruments. They are new and designed to look road worn. Or as Fender puts it, they have "a killer aged design aesthetic." Smells like bullshit. But surely there is a market for these. No self-respecting wannabe rocker worth his rocks in rock would be caught rockin' a non-rock axe, right? A rocker's gotta look like a rocker, and when it comes to rockin', Fender knows how to make you look your rockin' best. Just ask Springsteen, toting around that stage prop he calls a guitar.

So now, young poseurs, you can look the part right down to your brand new "distressed" guitar from Fender. Make sure you aren't wearing brand new jeans.

Here's the Joe Strummer model.

So wrong.

Texas is to Levi's as Alberta is to Wal-Mart Jeans

Two ads for two very different locations in the same publication using the same "leather jeans tag" styled logo. It is supposed to give you the impression that Texas/Alberta are rugged, casual, playful, tough, exciting, outdoorsy and leathery. Not sure, but I think Texas used this idea first, proving once again that Canadians are just jealous camp followers*.

Which reminds me, time to revive the "Statements on States" tourism reviews.

Part I
Part II

* I am joking, Canadians. I love you. I can prove it.

Release Your Inner Stripper

Not living in New York or LA, I don't know this store (shop, boutique, designer) so I can't even be sure what is being sold. The shoes, the bag, the black...thing...the models are wearing?

It doesn't matter. They are really selling a brand, a mood, a mystique, an attitude. And I'm sure it works on the demo targeted. I'm seeing Paris Hilton and the Olsen Twins.

Scamp did some nice work for Levi's where it's all about attitude and mystique. You know what Levi's are, what they mean. So the product doesn't even need to be in the ads.

Harley-Davidson could take a clue.

Previously in "Stranger Than Fashion"

Pink Shirted Soccer Team
Chicks Dig Stuffed Animals
Crocs: Just Say No
Androgyny Won't Go Away
ChuckTaylor Rolls in His Grave
On a Fashion Shoot

Scanned from The New York Times Magazine

Cargoes of Gold, Silver, Precious Stones and Pearls

T, The New York Times Style magazine, is filled with ads for stuff a good 99.999% of us will never buy, like a $47.5 million 5th Avenue penthouse, $9,000 sofas and other luxuries that make you shake your head in bemused wonder and simultaneous disgust. I enjoy some of the pictorials of cool architecture, but there is a level of pretentiousness within this magazine that causes me to pick it out of the paper first thing, because I know that every ad within competes with the next, where a simple chair, shoe, stove or clock is treated as a one-of-a-kind museum piece. Maybe I'm just jealous of the exceedingly rich, but I like to believe that if I had millions of dollars, I still wouldn't spend $10,800 on a Pergamena Folding Camp Bed.

So it was kind of nice to see lowly Target take out a detachable 8-panel brochure in this week's edition, highlighting what they call Design for All^® which featured "great design from A to Z."

I'm sure your average Central Park West socialite wouldn't slum at Target unless they had a real emergency and a handy disguise, but the ad artfully conveys that great design need not be expensive. (The item chosen for the letter Q was the Q-tip. A simple design and a great invention.) And if you're the kind of person who looks at my Vietnamese-made rubberwood workstation here at home and determines that I'm a cheap, swamp-dwelling Target shopper who probably still prefers the Levi's^® brand for jeans and spends zero dollars on haircuts, well...you' d be right.

Now, maybe while Target is so focused on cool design that functions well, they can find a new vendor to supply an alternative to those broke-down red plastic ghetto shopping carts. I've yet to push one that didn't have a bad wheel and a weird clunking noise.

Title of this post taken from here.