The Soap Star vs The Perfume Goddess - Is it clean, fresh advertising or will it get up your nose?
21
October
2018
The Soap Star vs The Perfume Goddess - Is it clean, fresh advertising or will it get up your nose?
By Arlene Maltman
‘Giselle surfs’! The surf media is on high alert. The world’s highest paid supermodel, Giselle Bündchen stars in the, elegant Gatsby-esq, Channel No. 5 perfume commercial, beautifully shot by famed director of Moulin Rouge, Baz Luhrmann.
Set in New York City and the Hamptons, it’s a story of love and lust. Giselle is your typical working mum juggling responsibilities of kids, work and thoughts of whether she’s married the right man. She seeks out that all-important ‘me time’ in the water.
We see her enter the ocean, she duck dives effortlessly, paddles her sleek custom made Channel board out to the waves, her low-cut couture wetsuit hangs seductively on her perfect form, she strokes into the deep blue, with grace she pops up to her feet, executes a sweeping cutback and then pulls in to a perfectly cylindrical 6ft backside barrel. Stoked, she runs up the beach, peels off her wetsuit, only to just miss her longing husband as he drives away in a chauffeured driven black Range Rover, leaving only a love note. (That’ll teach her to stay out in the water too long).
Us surfers have to suspend belief. We need to allow ourselves to be carried along by the advert’s melodic wave of sultry music: a throaty cover of the Grease hit, “You’re The One That I Want”, crooned by her seductive paramour. Because, who cares about the fact that she isn’t wearing a leash, that her board has no wax on it, and the Hamptons are unlikely to produce perfect 6ft waves firing down a reef; and who cares whether it is actually Giselle, or her double riding the wave? (She used to date 11 time World Champion Kelly Slater, so who knows, she might be that good).
I did a commercial once, in the 80’s - for Surf laundry detergent. I wore a red polyester skirt, which I had to pull up over my hips so that I could straddle the board. Once standing up, the skirt remained crumpled up around my waist; it definitely wasn’t the shot they were looking for. The director shouted into a large cone shaped megaphone: “PULL DOWN YOUR SKIRT!” Yep, roger that Mr Director, just let me take-off on this sucking 6ft wave over sharp reef and get my balance first, I’ll worry about the skirt later.
The white sleeveless top, made of some kind of nasty material, cut into my skin and left rubs under my armpits. The makeup lady smeared the sores with Vaseline so that I could paddle back out into the surf and continue to get the perfect ‘skirt shot’.
I was invited to do the commercial during my first year of college in California. They would fly me out to the Canary Islands to film. The copywriter from a top London agency had penned the script for Lever Brothers: I was to be the ‘mother of 2 children’, and along with my ‘husband’ we were to spend the day on the beach surfing. I would spill ketchup on my white top, as you do when you eat hot dogs, and then run into the surf to be cleansed.
Due to the shortage in those days of women surfers, my daughter, it transpired, was really a boy… I was very much looking forward to shooting this tale of transvestites and tight skirts.
The final edit can be found somewhere in the YouTube library, its soundtrack is in the genre of Beach-Boy-style-Muzak, and they got the skirt shot. Thankfully my daughter… no son… recovered sufficiently from his cross-dressing ordeal and has gone on to have a career as a pro surfer.
So Giselle and I have some similarities, I mean I feel sorry for the woman, goodness knows what torture she must have gone through getting in and out of that wetsuit. I could have told her, it’s hard work doing so many takes, especially with a wardrobe malfunction.
And, I wonder, if like me, she wrestles with the fact that my beloved sport/lifestyle has been used/exploited to sell all kinds of products from Guinness to our very own Isle. The surfing fraternity have spoken: ‘something didn’t feel right’, ‘stealing from surf culture again’, ‘it all helps the image of surfing… And Giselle looks great wet anyway.’
But no matter what we think, it’s undeniable that this lustrous commercial has put surfing in a new league of super sexy and big bucks. Giselle and No.5 all cash in; we get to squirt a bit of perfume and live the dream.
Once again, Luhrmann hasn’t just made a commercial, he’s made an extravagant mini-movie, a work of art. The lines between art, fiction and commercialism are becoming increasingly blurred as major brands look for bigger and bolder ways to promote their products.
If only I had taken a leaf out of Giselle’s fellow supermodel Linda Evangelista’s book, the famous 90’s super model, who said she wouldn’t get out of bed for less than 10,000 dollars a day. Me and my red polyester skirt could have become stars of the big screen, we could have been an icon for a generation, we could have been up there with the best.
Ah, but there you have it … some of us do it purely for the love.
Arlene Maltman is a former European surfing champion and professional surfer turned marketer. Arlene has worked in New York as a copywriter for some of the world’s top brands. She still surfs and lives in St Ouen, Jersey in the Channel Islands.