Campaign Trail: Mugler shoots for the stars with Hunter Schafer

Campaign Trail: Mugler shoots for the stars with Hunter Schafer

Campaign Trail is our evaluation of a few of the greatest new inventive efforts from the advertising world. View previous columns in the archives right here.

In 1992, Thierry Mugler upended the perfume world with the launch of Angel, the first gourmand fragrance and certainly one of the best-selling fragrances of all time. More than three many years later, Angel is at the middle of certainly one of the luxurious model’s most vital strikes since its acquisition by L’Oréal in 2019.
Mugler and artistic director Casey Cadwallader tapped Publicis Luxe to craft a marketing campaign to launch the new perfume Angel Elixir. At the middle of the effort is a 60-second quick movie starring Hunter Schafer that envisions the perfume as a taking pictures star that transmogrifies the model-actor-activist into her highest kind. The media marketing campaign launched worldwide on March 1.

When planning the marketing campaign, Publicis Luxe and Mugler’s advertising staff shortly synchronized round a narrative of a lady shifting in the direction of a taking pictures star — impressed by Angel’s iconic bottle form — and rising from the collision reborn as a brand new lady who’s extra assured and extra hanging. The pitch would enable Mugler to marry the new perfume with the model’s eye-catching trend.
“We actually needed to match the two universes and to have consistency between all that’s accomplished on trend and the perfume a part of the model,” defined Publicis Luxe inventive director Aurélien Nauleau. “We concerned Casey fairly [quickly] on the mission and we had lots of calls from that place to begin to twist the script and story to make it a bit bit extra stunning at every a part of the film.”
At the coronary heart of the Angel Elixir marketing campaign was the concept of transcendence and transformation into a brand new imaginative and prescient of femininity that’s up to date, liberated and boundless. To convey this idea to life, the staff casted Schafer, who has modeled for numerous trend homes and broke by means of in popular culture on account of her starring position in HBO’s controversy-courting highschool drama “Euphoria.” To convey the movie from script and casting to filming and last product, the inventive staff held a contest between three administrators, with Quentin Deronzier — a French director whose credit embrace music video work for Drake — profitable the day.
“Quentin was actually the one which understood the most about the model and the place we needed to push it visually. He brings quite a bit to the way to make the story doable, the way to create it and the way to be visually a bit bit extra stunning,” Nauleau stated.

“Angel Elixir – the Film” is a hanging, futuristic quick movie that’s in fixed, virtually vertigo-inducing movement. Schafer’s character begins by strolling on a protracted, white catwalk in black area meant to evoke Mugler’s trend exhibits. Soon, she is working on what’s revealed to be a vertical constructing amid skyscrapers in the night time sky. The perspective adjustments once more, as a zoom into Schafer’s iris morphs into the curvature of the Earth. The character lets go and floats towards a taking pictures star, initiating a course of that transforms her right into a crystal-adorned celestial physique. Instead of closing on an ordinary packshot, Schafer’s character catches the Angel Elixir bottle and flings it again to the digicam and into area.

The movie was a collaboration between stakeholders. Cadwallader designed the 3D-rendered costume that Schafer’s last kind wears primarily based on a drawing from the archives of Mugler founder, Thierry Mugler, whereas 3D artists labored to fine-tune the render, together with the stardust that fills the body. For his half, Deronzier got here up with the concept and created the animatic for the eye-to-Earth shot, and used a 360-degree digicam to seize Schafer for the render. The movie is soundtracked by a remix of Charli XCX’s “Dreamer” by Ashland Mines, two frequent Mugler collaborators.
“From the place to begin with Casey, the goal that we had was we do not wish to make a classical fragrance industrial film — we wish to have one thing actually out of the field, to shake up the class a bit bit,” Nauleau stated.
The quick movie touches on three values which are a part of Mugler’s DNA: fantasy, fascination and fearlessness. Mugler performs in the fantasy world of excessive trend — it isn’t an off-the-cuff or way of life model. The sci-fi surreality of the movie speaks to the model’s embrace of the unreal and poetic, whereas Schafer’s fierce efficiency keys into the model’s fearless ethic.
The inclusion of Schafer, who’s transgender, additionally continues Mugler’s lengthy custom of incorporating LGBTQ folks and tradition into its exhibits, movies and campaigns. Schafer first made headlines in 2016 as a plaintiff in the ACLU’s lawsuit towards North Carolina’s so-called “rest room invoice.” Even at a time when the inclusion of trans and gender non-conforming folks is inflicting conservative backlash towards firms together with Bud Light and Nike, Schafer’s casting was a no brainer for the unapologetic Mugler model.
“We actually needed someone related to all of [Mugler’s] values round inclusivity and variety,” Nauleau stated. “Hunter was, for us, the excellent lady to embody all that.”

https://www.marketingdive.com/information/mugler-angel-elixir-hunter-schafer-campaign-trail/647596/

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