In advertising, there’s an unspoken rule that you never speak badly of someone else’s work. Unless it’s a fragrance ad. So grab a bucket, make sure your space is free of sharp objects, and suffer through these truly awful selections in our 2019 Fragrance Ad Wrap up: A Q+M Holiday Tradition: The Film: The Scent. (or catch up first with: 2016, 2017 and 2018).
Lacome: Idôle
It’s barely noticeable at first, but there’s a horse in this spot. This lady with one-name hijacks a bottle of The Scent, steals a horse (theory, but let’s be honest, that’s not her horse) and bolts to Griffith Park. People in LA don’t give even one shit about a lady on a horse downtown (accurate). The background on this tells me that it’s about women’s empowerment, but that doesn’t explain why despite having only one name, she is a terrible horse thief.
Burberry: My Burberry
This is Burberry’s first appearance on the wrap up and they decided to record me waiting for my dentist appointment. Kidding of course; I don’t go to the dentist. This spot is 30 years long.
YSL: Freedom
YSL is back with Libre: The New Fragrance of Freedom, or translated, Freedom: The new Fragrance of Freedom. Falconry is super hot with Gen-Z right now. Throw in a cover of The Soup Dragons white-reggae cover of a Rolling Stones song and this is a full 60 second spot of comments re: how this is a Pitbull song. “I got new rules I count ‘em: 1 – get into falconry, 2 – buy this perfume.”
Paco Rabanne: Invictus & Olympéa (together!?)
The poor horse from that Lancôme ad escaped from Zendaya only to end up in a desert getting chased by the shame of “shit, I dunno, man, shot-for-shot that Mad Max reboot from 5 years ago?” “Can we at least use the same Kanye song we did the last few years?” “you know Kanye is like, not as he once was.” “Whatever, kill the horse.” Anyway, real-life couple Kiwi Von Pistol Tips and Lady Sand In Bits win everything and things do not work out for the horse.
Dior, Sauvage
Remember when white Johnny Depp played a Native American named Stupid in a Disney film and it wasn’t a problem at all? And he thought “I probably shouldn’t do that again, it was a bad look.” …Welp. This perfume is called Savage.
Happy Holidays everyone, don’t forget to rest up for next season and send me your favorites from this year on Twitter.