Behind the windows of this very special Drum adVENT Calendar you’ll find a different member of the creative industry venting their feelings on a Christmas ad, or ads, they love or loathe. Today it’s WCRS creative director, Billy Faithfull.
Inevitable. Christmas in a word. Sleigh bells will ring. Turkey meat will dry out. Christmas ads will air. And whilst an arms race of emotionality rages between the supermarkets and department stores, I’ll save my warm cockles for the annual migration of the olfactory advertising gems that are perfume ads.
So rejoice! Because in ‘Inevitable’, Chanel No.5’s latest offering, the lord of all perfume advertising has truly been born this day. Brad Pitt, festively styled like Jesus hit the Gap sale, commits to film his most powerful performance to date. ‘Inevitable’ is a complex metaphysical beast. So let’s break it down.
“It’s not a journey. Every journey ends but we go on. The world turns and we turn with it.” Chanel No.5 is not a journey. It’s a perfume. Journeys end. And that’s no good. Because things that end don’t live forever and Chanel No.5, like Brad Pitt’s hair, is immortal.
“Plans disappear and dreams take over.” Plans are boring. Plans are for people with jobs and suits and mainly for people who work in offices, not in adverts or films or in front of hastily erected grey backgrounds in modernist Californian beach houses. Dreams, conversely, are really good. They’re much better than plans. With the exception of architectural plans for modernist Californian beach houses. Which are sort of like dreams. In a way.
“But wherever I go, there you are.” Chanel No.5 is really, really strong perfume. It lasts forever. Literally. Also figuratively. But mostly geographically, in this instance.
“My luck, my fate, my fortune.” You’d be forgiven for thinking that this is just the same thing written three times for dramatic effect. Dead wrong. Forgive me for paraphrasing, but Brad intimates that with any luck, his fate is to change his own destiny and those choices, given half the chance, could change his fortunes forever. It’s obvious, really.
“Chanel No5. Inevitable.” It would be deeply inappropriate to attempt to decipher the incredibly poignant meaning behind the word ‘inevitable’, but I think what it possibly means, on a very simplistic level, is that you can buy Chanel No.5 absolutely everywhere. Even outside of London.
So there you have it. ‘Inevitable’ just won Christmas. If Christmas were a competition. Which it is. In conclusion: Bradvert.
Billy Faithfull is the creative director at WCRS. Billy met his creative partner Ross Neil at school in art class, they chose separate careers in brand design and fine art respectively but they jumped at the chance to work together as ad creatives. After a stint at Mother, four years at HHCL, and five years at WCRS Billy has worked on campaigns for the likes of BMW, 118118, Twining’s, Captain Birdseye and re-launching the Sky brand SKY+.
One of Holler executive creative director Will Pyne's 18 December adVENT's is "a shining star and the other a tramp’s stocking."