Advertising Forgiveness
Kate Moss - Arab Strap
“If you are in here and haven’t made a mistake, I’d like to meet you because I’ve been waiting for Jesus – and today would be the day.” – Sharon Stone, new face of Christian Dior’s Capture Range, defending Kate Moss & openly criticizing companies who were ending their contracts with the British supermodel after her cocaine scandal (source: CNN.com)
Ok, here’s the deal Ms. Stone – while I applaud you for your charming wit, I might have to use this entry to smack some Maryam-brand of sense into your silly albeit gorgeous Hollywood Liberal head. Of course, I’m not saying that I’m about to agree with the overly-moralistic masses out there and start campaigning for Kate Moss to be burned at the stake. Here’s what I’m saying: Many of us have done our fair share of experimentation with substances at some point in our lives, plenty have made it a habit but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be given a chance to live the rest of our lives in peace. But advertising has nothing to do with morals or divine forgiveness for human errors. It’s about selling the product, or more accurately, creating awareness and building reputation and rapport with the target consumer market which will ultimately, over an extended period of time, indirectly increase sales and profit for the company behind the product. While I have constantly spoken in the past against the apparent lack of ethics (which is a challenging term to define in itself) in the advertising industry, I have not yet gone so far as to delude myself into thinking that the main objective of advertising is anything other than money. Advertising works by creating space for need in the consumer and offering a “solution” towards fulfilling it. The space for need is created through the promise of a fantasy life for the consumer, provided of course, they purchase the product advertised. This fantasy life can be represented by a great many things – a lighter that works once you’ve brought it scuba diving for instance or in the form of a hot body, a gorgeous, symmetrical, age-defying face or a charmed, glitzy, fabulously glamorous, airbrushed life as a whole.
Kate Moss used to embody a fantasy many of us hold – beautiful, glamorous, rich and famous from merely standing around in clothes all day with an enviable (and for the majority of us, wholly unattainable) sense of style and oh, thin. She was also cool mostly because she made no pretensions about being anything other than a model and thus made no hilarious attempts at writing a novel (Naomi Campbell, do you feel the burn?), recording a CD (Naomi, Tyra, feel the burn, feel it) or being a “serious actor” (Cindy Crawford, you honestly think we stopped laughing at Fair Game yet?). She didn’t utilize her celebrity status to pimp her favorite spiritual cult or fad diet (Madonna, one more time I hear the word ‘Kabbala’ and ‘macrobiotic from you, my head’s going to go Kaba-BOOM!) In other words, Kate Moss seemed fabulous without even trying and because of this, plenty of women wanted to be her and plenty of men were fooled into thinking that if they bought a certain Calvin Klein perfume for their girlfriend, she would be magically transformed into Kate Moss. So you see, back then, having Kate Moss become the face of your product and company would be a psychotically clever and savvy marketing move.
Then along came the cocaine scandal. And suddenly, Kate Moss’ public image had gone from fabulous to err…. for lack of a witty phrase, not so fabulous. In the press and the public eye, she had gone from hip fashion maven, to troubled, drugged-up single mom with a heroin-junkie mediocre rocker of a boyfriend. And correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think the latter is the stuff consumer fantasies are made of. When you think about it, it no longer makes any sense (or profit) for companies such as Swedish clothing company, H&M to have Kate fronting their ad campaigns anymore. She no longer offers a fantasy but serious issues we already have and could entirely do without. No Fantasy = Hardly Any Sales. Business firms have their bank account to think about so for you Ms. Stone, Robbie Williams and the rest of you idealistically “liberal” twats to ultimately say that H&M and the rest should “forgive” Kate and uphold her contract with them – who’s being a tad too moralistic here, eh? Business organizations aren’t divine beings, they’ve never made any claims to being Jesus (although some have come close)- they need to make money in order to continue to exist and pay the thousands of employees they have under their payroll – hey, non famous people need money to support themselves, their families and their cocaine habits too. To ask a company to put their future sales and profit at risk, to put thousands of employees’ job security at risk in order to aid one model in boosting her depleting income and cocaine supply – doesn’t it sound a bit ridiculous to you?
That said, no one, no matter how famous should be subjected to the intrusion of privacy Kate Moss had to endure. What Kate Moss does in private with her own time, money and nose is not exactly any of our business. If she chooses to reduce the glaring shine of stardom by powdering her nose, then so be it. But business is business and if companies decide to drop Kate Moss from their advertising campaigns for the sake of their own reputation and bank account, so be it too. Yes, I know it’s harsh Ms. Stone, but it’s the way the world works.
For what it’s worth Sharon Stone, I forgive you for starring in that god-awful movie called Catwoman. Apparently, Dior has too. We all make mistakes.
So why don’t we just untwist our panties, sit back, relax, pop a couple of Xanax and smoke a big fat joint? Just make sure those nasty tabloid reporters aren’t around with camera phones ………………
