Just Buy It, Part II: Your Summer 25 Campaign Review

Our latest fashion scorecard features Gill Linton, the founder of Byronesque. Linton spent decades as a brand strategist in the ad industry helping fashion brands and brands that want to be fashionable say something exceptional.

We question if campaigns including Chloé, Valentino and Miu Miu promote products worth buying versus buying into. We discuss the importance of a coherent brand strategy, which goes beyond eye-catching visuals. While we still rate campaigns from 1 to 10, long-form conversations offer context for each campaign score. Part two starts now. You'll find part one here.

M-C Hill: Let’s compare Zendaya's work with On and Louis Vuitton. I thought she'd be a good case study on strategic marketing and communication. On made a space-age comedy trailer. I thought it gave On the personality it needs. What did you think?

Gill Linton: On actually made its millions targeting people that actually use trainers for running. Not the sneaker heads. It's interesting now that they have become fashionable. They have shifted from a marketing perspective, into a pop cultural form of communication that isn't necessarily driven by performance. I would bet that campaign was created by an ad agency or an internal team with an advertising background. It has a clear directive with one or two tennis balls.

M-C.H: It feels very ad executive!

G.L: A fashion team would not have done that.

M-C.H: Kubrick and comedy!

G.L: [Laughs] Humour?

On is using fame for fame's sake. That industry is well known for borrowing from talent, like Nike in the sports world building on actual sportsmen, then leveraging athletes. While On and LV are both playing with surreal absurdity, they're doing it in different ways. LV, they're saying you can be larger than life, literally. These bold accessories, you can live large like you're on the Riviera. That's just what I'm reading into.

M-C.H: They've played with scale.

G.L: Thank you. Whereas On is dramatising the emotional pull of dream it and you can be it. Which is just another way of saying, just do it.

M-C.H: Also, On is always community-driven. The team in your life, the team in your boardroom, the team that you work out with. They kept core values at the front of the message.

G.L: Maybe it's connected to the founder's story. I know he started out having this idea and built this massive business from nothing. At the end of the day, it still is another way of saying, just do it. They didn't want to alienate their performance audience, but also wanted to appeal to people that are wearing On to pair it with a summer dress, which is the worst offence. In trying to do those two things, they came up with something that was not very modern or relevant. It felt really dated.

M-C.H: Do you think LV's campaign felt modern? Did it feel dated or substantial, or anything at all?

G.L: We've seen the LV idea done a million times. That doesn't mean you can't do it. But you’ve got to give it something. There is literally no idea in there.

M-C.H: There's no pull! We've asked ‘why’ for some campaigns. There's no ‘why’ here either. It's just weird not to have built off the Barcelona Cruise collection. They made this complete change to attack of the 50-foot Zendaya.

G.L: This a perfect example of, you don't need to sell summer to me.

M-C.H: There is a disconnect in the messaging at Louis Vuitton. Even when Ghesquiére speaks, it often doesn't make sense with what you're seeing. I always thought Marc Jacobs’ campaigns had coherency. He always tried to bring a pop cultural sensibility into Louis Vuitton. That way anybody could relate to it. You don't get that with Ghesquiére. It's successful, but it's LV. It would be nice for the communication and visuals to match for a change.

G.L: It's hard to be negative about any of this stuff when they could easily turn around and say, ‘But we made 100 million selling that bag with Zendaya.’

M-C.H: On got nearly 6 million views with that trailer.

G.L: Exactly. My point is, none of this has longevity. They will start again with a different person, different idea, that they'll just stick a logo on next season. They could be building their foundation beyond just the visuals. That's how traditional brand strategy looks at things. And that's how it's different from how the fashion industry approaches communications. That's the main crux of what this conversation is about. The fashion industry is missing out on creating more robust, unique messaging that would make their communications more efficient.

M-C.H: Then don't you think On has done that successfully? You don't lose On as a performance-based trainers supplier.

G.L: I wear sneakers that did not have to sell me sneakers. If their brief was to appeal to the more mainstream customer, they've probably done a good job. If they want to be New Balance and infiltrate the fashion world in a real way, that ain't going to do it. How are we going to score this one?

M-C.H: On gets a solid 7. It elevates the mundaneity of On and adds looniness. They also use Zendaya properly. They made her act.

G.L: Yes, I absolutely agree on that.

M-C.H: It's proper utilisation of a movie star. Have her be a movie star. Giving it a solid 7. LV a 3.

G.L: LV a 3, On - 4.

On and Zendaya: A Cinematic Campaign Rating: 5.5/10

Zendaya for Louis Vuitton Resort Campaign Rating: 3/10

M-C.H: Now Levi's and their Beyoncé trilogy, I enjoy a pop culture callback when it means something. That first one where she's doing Nick Kamen cosplay, I quite loved. The second one in the pool hall, which was a Mario Sorrenti moment, was like, oh sh*t! One of your frustrations was, Beyoncé is eclipsing the moon. Whereas Levi's was the most important thing, she became the most important thing.

G.L: Like you, I don't think reviving great ideas and making them relevant for a new time is wrong. If the time is right, I'm okay with that.

M-C.H: It's got to be done well. That Kamen commercial is pop culture iconography. I think her first one was done with respect, but also in a numskull way because Beyoncé is a bit of a numb skull.

G.L: Maybe it was okay because we saw one, and we didn't know there were more coming. Once you get to the third one, you're just ripping off old ideas at this point and doing it badly. It's not just a one-off homage to a great ad idea. BBH is one of the greatest advertising agencies in the world. The big difference here is, they have paid for Beyoncé because she's famous. The flip side of this is when BBH did it, they made people famous. Because Levi's said so. Now, Levi's is good because Beyoncé says so? A stronger brand creates content that says, we are the arbiters.

They made Nick Kamen famous. They put him in that commercial. That is the sign of an incredibly powerful brand strategy and creative output. And so that's one difference. The other difference that I'm disappointed by is, it's not actually saying anything about the product. Take ‘Refrigerator.’ It's not saying anything about the product.

M-C.H: Tatiana Patitz and Bruce Hulse in the original was about a great pair of jeans.

G.L: Every ad they made was about the lengths people will go to for their Levi's. He didn't want to have sex with her because it was more rewarding to put on a nice cold pair of jeans on a hot day. The guy in the pool hall, he wasn't willing to give up his Levi's. There was none of that here. None of that was in any of these ads. It was just Beyoncé for Beyoncé's sake.

M-C.H: Michele Lamy has a saying, ‘You don't give your benediction away.’ That's what you think Levi’s did here. Score this trilogy…

G.L: 3! They can have one point each! And they should send an apology letter to BBH.

M-C.H: [Laughs] I'm going to give it a 6 because it still reflects what they do well. Beyoncé is not swallowing the thing whole...I don't think.

G.L: And hey, she's a cowboy now. So cowboys wearing jeans must be good.

M-C.H: Now we get into the synthetic aspect of marketing, where the cowboy is part of ‘Renaissance.’ That was the marketing.

G.L: You can imagine being in that meeting. ‘Let's do Beyoncé because she's in the country market now, and she's got cowboy hats. And her heritage is cowboy. It's perfect! And everybody loves Beyoncé. It'll be massive!’

M-C.H: Do you think Levi's needed this?

G.L: Yes.

M-C.H: Then a 6. If they needed it, it was done well enough. It keeps their importance relevant. So, yeah, 6.

G.L: In my defence, I would like to say on the record, it's not that they did it badly. It was done superficially as opposed to here's why our product's f*cking great.

M-C.H: Giving it a 6 probably goes against the rubric we've established since it doesn't promote anything to buy or buy into.

G.L: Where they go next is going to be interesting. They might have dug a hole for themselves because they can't just keep reissuing old ad work. Where does it go? You got to start again now.

Beyoncé x Levi’s Campaign Trilogy Rating: 3.5/10

M-C.H: A good transition to the Bottega Veneta series, because they use people of significance to explain the history of the intrecciato. They're pushing craft and technique. They're not saying, ‘Look! IN from Stray Kids wears it. Julianne Moore loves it. Tyler The Creator too’. They even use Tyler's surname. They are making a decided move to take the star out of the star. These are people of distinction who've made impacts in their fields.

What's the phrase for Bottega? When your initials are enough. They're doing just that. Tyler Okonma means a lot more Tyler The Creator. Also this idea of hands across Bottega. It was done well, tied into the artisanal nature of that house, because what's more artisanal than humanity and a genuine tactility?

G.L: Very well said. The reason I loved this was because they gave credit where it was due. It's very rare for a brand to embrace its history in an open way. The fact that they went back to past designers. The fact that it was their anniversary gave them permission to do it whilst not pissing off the current team.

M-C.H: Also Ed Buchanan's anniversary from being their first creative director.

G.L: Yes, exactly. I loved that they did that for him. Like I say, elevate your heroes, give credit where it's due. I'm a big fan of that. It was very nicely done. It was a little abstract, which I appreciate. The only thing I felt a little disappointed by was the language. Craft is our language. It's so generic. How an advertising agency approaches this differently is that might be the brief. It shouldn't end up in the ad.

M-C.H: I think we both roll our eyes so much at trend forecasts pushing trends. Yet no one talks about words as trends. How craft has been a trend-based word for the last nine years to make it mean something more. Craft used to be old ladies at pottery wheels. It was a dirty word. Now craft achieves renown because like, Jonathan Anderson uses it and Sarah Burton used it in 2017.

G.L: It's either that or they've just gone, we should be at the level of LV and Hermes in terms of quality. Maybe it's a smart move.

M-C.H: What do we give hands across Bottega?

G.L: 7 for integrating its past with its future.

M-C.H: We almost agree again. Going with 8 since the essential brand strategy is clear, tactics can be communicated easily. It has a visual elevation and like, gravitas.

Craft Is Our Language By Bottega Veneta Rating: 7.5/10

M-C.H: Let's move to something you seemed to like, the Saint Laurent campaign.

G.L: Yes. The fact that it all looks like a 90s, early 00s Opium ad, another one where you can literally see the bottle. It is saying this is pure unadulterated Yves Saint Laurent. Maybe the brief was to go back to Yves’ early days, where he lived a decadent life, went to incredible parties. It was probably hedonistic. Drugs were probably taken. It was unapologetic and I appreciated that. They were throwing one tennis ball saying, 'If you're at this party, you know exactly who I am. I am not holding back.' I'd love to get a sense of that historical narrative that's dug up. And what it is that people still romanticise that is to be made relevant today.

M-C.H: A sense of real dressing in a relaxed way. You still keep a fantasy version of the mid-70s in mind, but feel intrinsically modern. Maybe. I just thought it was quite clever to remove all those horrid suits from the runway. They were trying to do a chic Yves moment with all those girls in bad suits. What Vaccarello kept in were the brocade, lurex and lace fits, which felt stridently Yves Saint Laurent, and more modern. This campaign feels like an element of the past, candlelit by a desire for today.

G.L: When you compare it to the high summer campaign, they're showing a different side of the traditional summer that fashion puts out. They're having tea and cake in a back garden. Is this YSL by day in their ordinary lives? And the campaign we're just talking about is night time? Do we all become deviant gods and goddesses at night? Saint Laurent’s era was the '70s. That DNA carries through. Even the cups, saucers and layout feels very 70s. So if they're leaning into that and making it modern, great. That has the bones of strategy.

M-C.H: You really thought there was a continuity with the summer campaign and then the spring campaign?

G.L: Not visually, but I could justify it. The regular customer is not going to do that. But if one's day and one's night, I could justify it.

M-C.H: I think there is a continuity because they’re both of the past, but also contemporary. The high summer campaign is also 90s, though with Tina Barney, but still contemporary.

G.L: The only thing that comes to mind in response to that, is being contemporary isn't just hiring the new coolest photographer or stylist.

M-C.H: You don't think about who shot it or who styled it though. You're stuck on the imagery.

G.L: I must admit, you're right there. I think perhaps that's why I'm drawn to this campaign, because I'm so sucked into that decadent way the models are behaving. The richness of it. I started to imagine what was going on, which is very different. Unlike the Prada models. I didn't give a sh*t why they were standing in the middle of a boat.

M-C.H: This is buying into, obviously. It's convincing to pivot away from the Yves suit situation, stick with the 1976 lace stuff, the heavy bejeweled, brocade-y stuff to make that the world. The grade for the spring-summer campaign gets an 8 out of 10. And because Anthony Vaccarello feels cold sometimes, he suggested a real sense of humour here in the backyard. The high summer campaign is an 8 out of 10 as well. Even if you don't understand it straight away as a consumer, it holds your attention and you're asking the right questions. What do you think?

G.L: I'm going to give it a 7. I'm going to give them the benefit of doubt and believe that they are building on something. They've gone back to the roots, they're starting to make it relevant.

M-C.H: What about the high summer campaign?

G.L: I'm going to give it 7 just because they're not on a beach.

Saint Laurent Summer 25 Campaign: 7.5/10

Saint Laurent High Summer Campaign Rating: 7.5/10

M-C.H: [Laughs] You have a smart take on what Willy [Chavarria] does. You've compared it to what Helmut Lang did. The idea of community that you're buying into. This is probably the best example of buying into something in an authentic way.

G.L: Full disclosure, I am a big fan. Willy comes from the classiest school of marketing, which is Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. You can see how astute this has been pulled together. It is next generation for a number of reasons. It's authentic because it comes from his place, literally. He's representing a culture, subculture and generation he belonged to that were, similarly to Calvin Klein’s at that time, unseen. Portrayed in certain editorials and made to look really fucking cool. But they didn't have the uniform to buy. Willy's given them a voice, a message and a uniform based around his Latino roots, based around the way that he and his community put things together in a way that no one else does. And yet we all would love to be able to do, right? There's just an absolute f*cking coolness. It's not try hard. Confidence, knowing and self-belief in their own identity, he's made feel accessible. He's created a new silhouette to a wider market. It's branding with a message about humanity and inclusivity, but not flippant.

M-C.H: It's a visual generosity.

G.L: Absolutely. In the same way that Vivienne Westwood was vocal about something she cared about, he came out about humanity. He integrated it into the product. Her product was in service of the brand and the brand was in service to the product. That is the best brand building strategy that can ever exist. I think this CK school of branding is serving him very, very well. We're talking about underwear. It's called Big Willy, a safe space for an underwear line. That message is so much more considered than just selling pants and bras. He's not just sticking a logo on a pant and a bra. He's got a reason for it to exist. It's a safe space. He's got a sense of humor about it. It's called Big Willy. It's brilliant. But he's saying, ‘This generation, I'm here for you. I am with you. Come with me.’ It's like I say, this is Willy's generation. We're all just living in it.

M-C.H: He can't find any other way but to do it the way he knows how. I quite love that simplicity of the message.

G.L: He's got the potential to be a brand beyond just making clothes. Within the industry, it's a bigger reason for Willy being here. That is the ultimate in branding anything, whether you're selling magazines or condoms.

M-C.H: The hilarity is this was a men's activation, but transitioning Dirty Willy Underwear, the Big Willy thing, making it into women's wear. Intimate apparel for women. This was the first time that he's done that. It doesn't feel abnormal. Similar to Martine Rose, you find the woman in the men's wear, and you don’t overthink it. Just put the girl in the clothes. That's what happened here. An effortless, fluid way of moving the world along, moving the universe along, moving the inclusivity along with those girls who are in the family, putting them in blonde wigs, which is a different type of f*ck you. Explaining how the world works, since we all grew up with those same pop cultural markers of America. He knows that. So why can't he put these girls in blonde hair?

G.L: They look so f*cking great. When it's authentic and true and fluid, like you say, and it looks effortless, that's when you can put a brand on a pedestal and it carries authority. You trust whatever that brand is going to do. I remember Rick Owens once said he knows what cool is, it's when you're not trying. That's exactly what Willy's doing.

M-C.H: Willy is not co-opting his message, so you can't really get inside that way. The best way to buy into it is to quite literally buy, learn and participate. Just trying to be next to it is inauthentic. He's not really about that. This campaign doubles down on that. If you want it, buy it. It's funny, buying versus buying into, he's actually subsuming the buy. The only way you can buy into it is if you're not that. If you are that, you can buy it anyway because you wear yourself every day.

G.L: You've hit the nail on the head. He's not co-opting anything. He's not appropriating anything. He's not borrowing anything. Most other fashion brands borrow. That is exactly what brand strategy isn't about.

M-C.H: His archive is his life. You brought up the Calvin stuff. Well, he already established what he wanted Willy Chavarria to be before he got the Calvin job. He was able to maybe take some of the mechanics for how not to run a house and a big business from Calvin. But in terms of the art direction, he had his people, Jess [Cuevas] knows what he's doing. His archive, his history, working in these apparel houses, working at Joe Boxer to understand what branding means. All of these things led to this moment.

G.L: I could also be wrong. There's a word that I haven't mentioned here at all. Taste. Taste matters. It doesn't look like Willy's borrowing anybody else's taste. He knows. He already knows. Hedi [Slimane] is the same.

M-C.H: He'll give it to you both ways. You get the 7-inch and the 12-inch. In this one, I'm a bit biased, but it's 10 out of 10.

G.L: I am biased. I'm only giving him a 9 because I don't want to look like a fan girl to give him a 10.

M-C.H: I'm fine being a Willy Chavarria running dog.

Willy Chavarria Underwear Campaign Rating: 9.5/10